Posthumous quartos of the plays.
Three years after Shakespeare’s death—in 1619—there appeared a second edition of ‘Merry Wives’ (again imperfect) and a fourth of ‘Pericles.’ ‘Othello’ was first printed posthumously in 1622 (4to), and in the same year sixth editions of ‘Richard III’ and ‘I Henry IV’ appeared. [302] The largest collections of the original quartos—
each of which survives in only four, five, or six copies—are in the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the British Museum, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the Bodleian Library. [303] All the quartos were issued in Shakespeare’s day at sixpence each.