The First Folio has sometimes been regarded as a colonial imposition, intentionally stamping the supposed supremacy of the English language on other dominated cultures and suppressing indigenous voices. But its use as an instrument of soft-power diplomacy is still widespread.
I would love to see a modern bookbinder acknowledge the First Folio’s 400 years’ of readership. Something that looks less like a Bible and more like a book of magic. Tantalising, elemental, profound. Something that can reflect the appeal that Shakespeare’s friends John Heminges and Henry Condell made in a letter attached to the front of the volume in 1623. Their address “To the Great Variety Of Readers” declares that these plays are intended for “the most able to him that can but spell”.
Shakespeare is for everyone. And as Ben Jonson put it with such precision in his dedicatory poem “He was not for an age, but for all time”.
Gregory Doran is artistic director emeritus of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Episode one of the RSC podcast, My Shakespeare, The Folio Roadshow: The People, History and Stories of Shakespeare’s First Folio launches later this month via rsc.org.uk, and podcast platforms
Words of wisdom
Without the publication of the First Folio, we would have been denied some of Shakespeare’s greatest quotes.
The Taming of the Shrew (1594)
“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en”
“This is a way to kill a wife with kindness;/ And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour.”
“There’s small choice in rotten/ apples.”
“When I shall ask the banns and when be married.”
“If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”
The Comedy of Errors (1594)
“Every why hath a wherefore”
Henry IV Part 1 (1597)
“The better part of/ Valour is discretion; in the which better part I/ Have saved my life.”
“In those holy fields,/ Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,/ Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed,/ For our advantage on the bitter cross.”
As You Like It (1600)
“All the world’s a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players.”
Julius Caesar (1600)
“Friends, Romans, countrymen …/ I come to praise Caesar, not to bury him.”
“Experience is the teacher of all things.”
“Et tu, Brute?”
Twelfth Night (1602)
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness,/ And some have greatness thrust upon them.”
Measure for Measure (1604)
“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.”
“Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;/ Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.”
Macbeth (1607)
“Fair is foul and foul is fair,/ Hover through the filthy air.”
“Double double, toil and trouble,/ Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
“It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.”
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
“Out damned spot.”
Antony and Cleopatra (1607)
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/ Her infinite variety.”
“The odds is gone/ And there is nothing left remarkable/ Beneath the visiting moon.”
“Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch/ Of the ranged empire fall.”
Timon of Athens (1608)
“The moon’s an arrant thief,/ And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”
The Tempest (1611)
“Oh brave new world that has such people in it”
“Our revels are now ended…We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on. And our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.”
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
