first folio
Noun
Meaning
first folio (plural first folios)
The 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. The first such collection printed in folio format.
Examples
Ben Jonson mentions him in the same breath as Christopher Marlowe (with whom, in London, Kyd at one time shared a room) and John Lyly in the Shakespeare First Folio.
Both the Quarto and the First Folio call him "Robin Goodfellow" on the first entrance, but call him "Puck" later in the same scene, and they remain inconsistent.
Date and text The first page of Julius Caesar, printed in the Second Folio of 1632 Julius Caesar was originally published in the First Folio of 1623, but a performance was mentioned by Thomas Platter the Younger in his diary in September 1599.
Popular plays like 1 Henry IV and Pericles were reprinted in their quarto editions even after the First Folio appeared, sometimes more than once.
Nor did Shakespeare plan or expect his works to survive in any form at all; those works likely would have faded into oblivion but for his friends' spontaneous idea, after his death, to create and publish the First Folio.
It is thought that the printing of the First Folio was such an enormous task that the Jaggards' shop was simply needed to get the job done.