The Second Folio. The Third Folio. The Fourth Folio.
The Second Folio edition was printed in 1632 by Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot and William Aspley, each of whose names figures as publisher on different copies. To Allot Blount had transferred, on November 16, 1630, his rights in the sixteen plays which were first licensed for publication in 1623. [312a] The Second Folio was reprinted from the First; a few corrections were made in the text, but most of the changes were arbitrary and needless. Charles I’s copy is at Windsor, and Charles II’s at the British Museum. The ‘Perkins Folio,’ now in the Duke of Devonshire’s possession, in which John Payne Collier introduced forged emendations, was a copy of that of 1632. [312b] The Third Folio—for the most part a faithful reprint of the Second—was first published in 1663 by Peter Chetwynde, who reissued it next year with the addition of seven plays, six of which have no
claim to admission among Shakespeare’s works. ‘Unto this impression,’ runs the title-page of 1664, ‘is added seven Playes never before printed in folio, viz.: Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The London Prodigall. The History of Thomas Ld. Cromwell. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The Puritan Widow. A Yorkshire Tragedy. The Tragedy of Locrine.’ The six spurious pieces which open the volume were attributed by unprincipled publishers to Shakespeare in his lifetime. Fewer copies of the Third Folio are reputed to be extant than of the Second or Fourth, owing to the destruction of many unsold impressions in the Fire of London in 1666. The Fourth Folio, printed in 1685 ‘for H. Herringman, E. Brewster, R. Chiswell, and R. Bentley,’ reprints the folio of 1664 without change except in the way of modernising the spelling; it repeats the spurious pieces.