An excerpt from one of them will soon be offered at auction at Holabird Western Americana Collections, containing the complete play, “Henry IV, Part I”.
This rare manuscript has been authenticated as an original fragment of Shakespeare’s First Folio by University of Nevada literature professor Eric Rasmussen.
The first compilation of the Elizabethan playwright’s dramatic works dates from 1623, seven years after his death. The plays were collected and edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell, two actors and friends of the writer.
Historians agree that, without them, 18 of Shakespeare’s plays, including “Macbeth” and “Twelfth Night”, might never have entered into posterity.
At the time, only 750 copies of the First Folio were printed. Only 235 complete copies are known to exist, of which only five are in private hands.
The book, on sale from Friday at Holabird Collections, is not a complete copy of the First Folio but an excerpt containing “Henry IV, Part I”. According to Rasmussen, some of Shakespeare’s plays were sold separately to cover part of the printing costs of the First Folio copies.
“One could speculate that perhaps the reason only 750 complete First Folios were published, rather than 1,000, is because a couple of hundred copies of individual plays were pre-sold as fragments with card stock covers, as a way to generate revenue and cover expenses during the lengthy production process,” the auction house explains.
‘Inestimable value’
This first edition of “Henry IV, Part I” is estimated to fetch US$50,000 (RM207,000) to US$100,000. Bids, however, could go higher given the great rarity of first editions of Shakespeare’s plays.
A copy of “Julius Caesar” dating from 1623 sold for US$175,000 at Bonhams in 2018. But that’s nothing compared to the US$9.98 million fetched by a copy of the First Folio at Christie’s two years later – a record sum for a printed literary work.
Holabird Collections says this copy of “Henry IV” is of “inestimable value”.
“The possibility of owning a piece of the most important literary work extant is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” it said.