It has been my privilege and joy to collaborate with this small team of highly talented and creative individuals. The site was built during the three Covid lockdowns of 2020/2021 and gave us all a glimpse of how it must have been during periods of plague in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, we have enjoyed the assistance of digital technology and that makes what Heminge, Condell and the Jaggards’ print shop achieved in 1623 all the more formidable.
All the woodcut style scraperboard illustrations on this site, inspired by Jost Amman’s The Book of Trades, first published in 1568, were cut and coloured for Folio400 by Den Stubbs who also created the opening animation.
Professor Emma Smith, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the First Folio, has kindly kept us on the straight and narrow with her limitless knowledge of the subject.
Marcus Coles, June 2021.
The actors recorded these speeches, under Dominic Dromgoole’s remote direction, during the first Covid lockdown in 2020. The recordings were expertly edited and adjoined to their respective, highlighted, First Folio texts by Pete Le May.
The First Folio is one of the great wonders of the literary world. Published in 1623, seven years after the death of its author, it was the first printed edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays. Without this achievement, we would have lost half of his dramatic work. This website is dedicated in gratitude to the 400th birthday of this foundational book on the 8th November 2023.