The first edition of Shakespeare’s Plays (folio, 1623) has been rising in price from the commencement of the nineteenth century; but the enormous prices now paid do not date further back than 1864, when a specially fine copy was bought by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts at George Daniel’s sale for £716, 2s. This amount was paid on account of the height of the book and of its great beauty, and possibly the circumstance of the year being the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth had something to do with it, but this sale had the effect of raising the price of all copies permanently.
Beloe, writing in 1807 (“Anecdotes,” vol. i. p. 36), said, “Perhaps there is no book in the English language which has risen so rapidly in value as the first edition of the works of our great national poet. I can remember a very fine copy to have been sold for five guineas. I could once have purchased a superb one for nine guineas.” This statement can be corroborated; for the Cracherode copy in the British Museum, one of the few really fine copies, has the price £8, 18s. 6d. marked in it. Richard Wright’s copy sold in 1787 for £10, Allen’s in 1795 for 18 guineas. Farmer’s copy (wanting title, and with the last leaf in MS.) sold for £7. Garrick bought his copy from Payne for £1, 16s. Jolley obtained it at Garrick’s sale in 1823 for £34, 2s. 6d., and at Jolley’s sale in 1844 it realised £84. Lord Denbigh’s fine copy sold in 1825 for £89, 5s., and Broadley’s in 1832 for £51; William Combes’s copy (wanting title-page and all prefatory leaves, but with the text of the Plays complete) fetched 8 guineas in 1837; Bright’s copy (1845), with title repaired, verses from another edition, and some leaves inlaid, brought £31, 10s. The Stowe copy (1849), with verses inlaid, £76; Hawtrey’s (1853), with some leaves mended, £63. In 1824 Mr. Thorpe the bookseller advertised a set of the four folios—first, £65; second, 10 guineas; third, £25; and the fourth, 6 guineas, or the four for £100. About the same time Mr. Pickering marked a similar set £95.
Copies of the first folio are so constantly sold that one might suppose it to be a common book, but this may be accounted for by the fact that they are constantly changing hands. There are only a few copies absolutely perfect, but others are made up from various copies, or with pages in facsimile. This makes the most imperfect copies of value, because they can be used to perfect others.
Dibdin described thirty copies of the first folio in his “Library Companion,” and these he arranged in three classes. In the first class he placed three copies, belonging respectively to Mr. Cracherode, the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville, and Mr. Daniel Moore. The first two are now in the British Museum, and the third is the Daniel copy, for which Lilly the bookseller offered £300.
“These have size, condition, and the genuine properties of a true copy. They are thirteen inches in height, eight and a half in width, have the true portrait and title-page, with the genuine verses in the centre of the leaf facing the title-page. They have no spurious leaves foisted in from other editions.... Of these three copies, that in the Cracherode collection is the most objectionable, as the commendatory verses of Ben Jonson, facing the title-page, are, although genuine, inlaid.”
Mr. Grenville’s copy was bought at Saunders’s sale in 1818 for £121, 16s., which was then thought to be a great sum, and Dibdin makes the unfortunate prophecy that this was “the highest price ever given, or likely to be given, for the volume.” Mr. Grenville told Dibdin that an ancestor of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn possessed an uncut copy of the first folio. “It was lying on the table in that condition when, in a luckless moment, a stationer in the neighbourhood of Wynnstay came in. The book was given to him to be bound, and off went not only the edges, but half of the margins.” Another piece of vandalism was the inlaying the leaves of the book and binding them in three volumes. This was Henderson the actor’s copy, which sold at Reed’s sale for £38. In the second class were included some very good copies.
“Lord Spencer’s copy had every leaf picked by the experienced hands of the late George Steevens. The verses opposite are genuine, but inlaid, and there are many tender leaves throughout. There are also in the centre of some of the pages a few greasy-looking spots, which might have originally received the ‘flakes of pie-crust’ in the servants’ hall, as notified by Steevens.[58] But it is a beautiful and desirable copy.”
The price mentioned by Steevens is that which the Duke of Roxburghe gave for his copy in 1790, respecting which Dibdin relates an anecdote that took his fancy so much, that he tells the story both at the beginning and at the end of his Bibliomania.
“A friend was bidding for him in the sale-room: his Grace had retired to a distance to view the issue of the contest. Twenty guineas and more were offered from various quarters for the book: a slip of paper was handed to the Duke, in which he was requested to inform his friend whether he was ‘to go on bidding.’ His Grace took his pencil and wrote underneath, by way of reply—
‘Lay on, Macduff;