ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the readers of Shakespeare before 1700 who made meaningful annotations in his printed plays. The Folio of 1623 is the first collection of Shakespeare's dramatic works. It consists of thirty-six plays, which are, as arranged, fourteen comedies, ten English histories and twelve tragedies. It contains neither Pericles, The Two Noble Kinsmen nor King Edward III. Shakespeare is one of the few among contemporary dramatists in that nearly all his dramatic works were collected in one volume in folio and the folio volume even saw three new editions during the seventeenth century. The correspondence in the First Folio at Meisei University between the text and the annotation is not as clear at first glance as it usually is in a quarto. The annotations do not appear to express the reader's interest in the history of the feud between Richard II and Henry IV before and after Henry's accession to the throne.