Comedies, Histories and Tragedies.: Published according to the true Original Copies. Unto which is added, Seven Plays, Never before Printed in Folio.

London: for H. Herringman, and are to be sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders,, 1685. The fourth folio, the last of the 17th-century editions of Shakespeare's works and the most grandly produced, this issue with the imprint naming Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, the booksellers to whom Herringman had entrusted his retail business. There were three issues, with slightly different imprints. John Macock printed the title page for Herringman's copies, "to be sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders". Robert Roberts printed the title pages for the other issues from a single type setting, with either three or four booksellers named. There is no known precedence among the three issues, but Macock's title is much the rarer of the two settings; the online Shakespeare Census locates thirty-five extant copies, only five in private hands. The 1623 first folio, edited by John Heminge and Henry Condell, contained thirty-six plays, to which seven plays were added in 1664 by Philip Chetwin for the second issue of the third folio, of which only Pericles is in part the authentic work of Shakespeare. This fourth folio was a straight reprint of the second issue of the third folio, issued by Henry Herringman in conjunction with other booksellers, part of Herringman's larger project of publishing pre-Restoration playwrights in folio. The Shakespeare volume was the centrepiece of Herringman's trio completed by the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 and the Ben Jonson folio of 1692. The most immediately striking aspect of the fourth folio is its height: Herringman used a larger paper size to increase the number of lines per page and decrease the bulk of the book. Although this is the only edition in which each play does not start on a fresh page, it is in a larger font and more liberally spaced than the three earlier editions. (The two pages of sig. L1 are set in smaller type, presumably after the discovery that some text had been omitted.) The text was set from a copy of the third folio divided into three portions and sent to three different London printers. The Comedies were printed by Robert Roberts, the Histories and first four Tragedies by Robert Everingham, and the remaining Tragedies by Everingham's former master printer, John Macock; the three parts are separately paginated. The fourth folio remained the favoured edition among collectors until the mid-18th century, when Samuel Johnson and Edward Capell argued for the primacy of the first folio text. In common with the third, the fourth folio dropped the final "e" from Shakespeare's name, a spelling that persisted until the beginning of the 19th century. Folio (360 x 232 mm). Eighteenth-century blind-panelled reversed calf, red morocco label, red edges. Engraved portrait by Martin Droeshout above the verses To the Reader on verso of the first leaf, double column text within typographical rules, woodcut initials. Joints and front inner hinge neatly repaired, frontispiece leaf neatly restored at lower outer corner and at inner margin, engraved and printed area untouched, last leaf backed, a few minor blemishes, sig. O4 with two small paper repairs in upper margin, small paper repair to outer margin of 2L2, spill-burn causing small hole in 2M2 touching two letters either side, 3B3 restored at lower corner with small portion of frame supplied in pen facsimile, small paper repair at lower margin of 3C3, a little tight in the gutter but otherwise generous margins, generally clean and fresh, a very good copy. Bartlett 123; Gregg III, p. 1121; Jaggard, p. 497; Pforzheimer 910; Wing S-2915.