This is the latter of two ca. 1641 reissues of the second edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare, commonly known as "the second folio." The so-called "first folio" was printed in London and issued in 1623 by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount. It contained 36 plays, 18 of which had never before appeared in print, including Macbeth, The tempest, and Julius Caesar. Before the first folio, a number of Shakespeare's plays had been published in various smaller formats that were often edited poorly, with significant textual divergences between editions.

The front matter contains commendatory verses and epistles dedicatory from contemporaries and admirers of Shakespeare, including Ben Jonson, James Mabbe, Leonard Digges, Hugh Holland, and John Milton. "An epitaph on the admirable dramaticke," included for the first time in the second folio, is Milton's first published poem.

This edition was originally issued under a number of variant imprints in 1632, each reflecting the names of different booksellers who had shares in the venture. Remainder stock was later reissued, probably ca. 1641 and again at a later date. See: Todd, W.B., "Issues and states of the Second Folio", in Studies in bibliography, v.5 (1952-53), p. [81]-108. Greg also enumerates these variants.

Colophon: Printed at London by Thomas Cotes, for John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, Richard Meighen, and Robert Allot, 1632.

Signatures: [superscript pi]Áœ *́þ A-2B́œ 2C℗ø a-ýœ 2a-3ćœ 3d́þ

Numerous missigned leaves and errors in pagination are present. See Greg for further detail.

Title page vignette (Droeshout portrait); head- and tailpieces; initials.

Bartlett, H.C. Shakespeare early editions, 120

Boston Public Library. Barton collection catalogue, p. 2

ESTC S95179

Greg, III, p. 1116

Pforzheimer, 906

Boston Public Library (Rare Books Department) copy bound in early calfskin panelled and tooled in blind with the gilt, armorial super-ex-libris of E.V. Utterson on both covers. The spine has been rebacked in morocco, but maintains earlier compartment panels and labels. A pencil inscription regarding the condition of the copy is present on the front flyleaf recto and a manuscript list of typographical peculiarities is tipped onto the verso. The merry wives of Windsor has been annotated with marginal corrections in an early hand and there are pencil markings throughout several of the other plays. The autograph of John Freeman appears twice under the colophon and the armorial bookplate of the Barton Library is present at front. Leaf 3d4 has been rebacked and reattached. The first leaf, which contains the Jonson verses, is remargined. This copy contains, in its front matter, leaves from at least two of the different issues of the second folio described by W.B. Todd. The title leaf ([superscript pi]A2) is here taken from what he describes as the first issue, variant 1b, printed in 1632. Based on evidence in the Barton Collection catalog, this leaf was inserted to replace the missing, original title page. One half of the sheet on which that original title page was printed remains. Containing both the Milton epitaph and an anonymous effigy, this remaining leaf matches what both Todd and R.M. Smith refer to as the ́effigies B́ variant. An extra ́effigieś leaf (Todd: "effigies C"), here autographed by Thomas Davies, is also inserted.