"THE COMMON CURSE OF MANKIND—FOLLY AND IGNORANCE": TROILUS AND CRESSIDA AND CORIOLANUS, EXTRACTED FROM THE THIRD FOLIO, 1664

SHAKESPEARE. [Troilus and Cressida. Coriolanus]. [London: Printed for P.C., 1664]. Folio (9 by 13-1/2 inches), period-style three-quarter calf gilt, red morocco spine labels, marbled boards. $3500.

Thirty original leaves from the Third Folio, containing Troilus and Cressida and Coriolanus, handsomely bound.

The four folios of Shakespeare are the first four editions of Shakespeare's collected plays. These were the only collected editions printed in the 17th century (a 1619 attempt at a collected edition in quarto form was never completed). The 1664 second issue of the Third Folio (from which this play was taken), is the first to include Pericles (along with six other spurious plays) and is therefore the first complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. The Third Folio is believed to be the scarcest of the four great 17th-century folio editions, a large part of the edition presumed destroyed in the Great London Fire of 1666. "The folios are incomparably the most important work in the English language" (W.A. Jackson, Pforzheimer Catalogue).

The two plays contained in these extracted leaves (gatherings Bbb-[Fff6]) are among the Bard's bleakest but most compelling. Coriolanus is one of the Bard's last two tragedies and one of his most political plays; T.S. Eliot declared that it "is, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's most assured artistic success." Troilus and Cressida and Coriolanus complete; leaf [2ev] begins the text of Titus Andronicus. The facsimile title page and frontispiece reproduce these pages of the second issue of the Third Folio, bearing the date 1664 in the imprint rather than 1663. See Jaggard, 496.

Text generally quite clean. A handsome, wide-margined copy in fine condition.