“He sought nothing less than the obliteration of the language and culture of the native populations in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, nurturing a desire to replace these with the English language and its literary products. The book contains a near-complete collection of the bard's plays. “For Grey, the First Folio represented the pinnacle of culture, but specifically English culture,” Laoutaris says. Four hundred years after it was first printed, Shakespeare's First Folio is up for sale for 7.5 million. Sir George Grey, who had served as a colonial governor, established libraries worldwide that included copies of the First Folio. He tells me, when he opens one of the plays. Even for Tennant, though, Shakespeare needs decoding. By the 19th century, the original Folio was becoming a valued piece of history, in part through the efforts of collectors Henry and Emily Folger, and a symbol of might for the British Empire. Dame Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth and Sir Ian McKellen as Macbeth in the RSC's production in 1977. The Folio proved successful enough that an updated edition, the Second Folio, was published in 1632, a Third Folio in 1663 and a fourth in 1685. ![]() Without the First Folio, published 400 years ago this year, those plays may have been lost to history. “When it was released, the First Folio cost more to produce than any other collection of plays in history up until that point.” Imagine a world with no Macbeth, no Tempest and no Twelfth Night. ![]() “Only those with deep pockets, and the space to read them, could afford such luxurious products,” says Laoutaris, an associate professor at the Shakespeare Institute in the playwright’s native Stratford-On-Avon and author of Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the Fist Folio, which came out this year.
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