SC #: 5381

Location: Private collection

Shelfmark: [none]

Notes about issue: This edition exists in three distinct states: the first includes copies that were sold without Troilus and Cressida; the second contains Troilus and Cressida but without its prologue and with a redundant final page of Romeo and Juliet crossed out by the printer; the third includes a cancel leaf with the Prologue of Troilus on its recto and the first page of the play, reprinted from a new setting of type, on its verso. In none of the states is Troilus included in the "Catalogue" of plays.

Copy-specific notes: This copy was exhibited by Christie's, 2-26 May 2023, and is therefore verified. It is currently owned privately. See https://www.christies.com/en/events/shakespeare-first-folio-exhibition/about . In this copy as it currently stands, the Histories precede the Comedies. Since "The missing plays include the four comedies which ordinarily appear at the beginning [Tem, TGV, MWW, MM] and Cym., which ordinarily comes at the end," Hook surmises that "the volume, originally bound ... in the normal order, was heavily damaged both at the front and back, and when it was rebound, the order of the plays was changed" (335). Several leaves are supplied from a copy of F2.

Provenance: Brereton, Randall (17th c.) ; Honeyman, Robert B. (1897–1987) ; Sotheby's ; Wells, Gabriel (1862-1946)

Provenance notes: Publishers Weekly lists the copy as sold by Gabriel Wells and notes that "It comes from the library of one of the oldest titled families in England, a library to which nothing has been added in more than two hundred years." Honeyman's extensive collection was sold to Sotheby's, which sold it in several auctions between 1978 and 1981.

Marginalia: "The volume contains manuscript entries in at least five hands ranging from early or mid-seventeenth century to at least mid-eighteenth century" (Hook 335). One of the 18th century hands lists quartos of each play or "no quarto" above the play title, including a 1639 2H4 (perhaps an error for 1H4) and a 1624 R3 (perhaps an error for 1634), neither of which is otherwise known to have existed (Hook 336). On 2T2v: "Be it knowne to all men by these psents that I Randall Brereton"

Rasmussen & West notes: [This copy is listed among the "Other Unfound Copies" (p. 866)]. It is also described (among the "Other Copies, Possible Copies") in West, 311-12.

Binding: Eighteenth-century

For scholarship on this copy, see: Frank S. Hook, "The Manuscript Alterations in the Honeyman First Folio," PBSA 53 (1959): 334-8; Publishers Weekly, 18 Aug 1934, p. 512; Robert M. Smith, "An Interesting First Folio," Shakespeare Association Bulletin 10 (1935): 58-9.