Talk:First Folio

Quarto link
The quarto link in the first paragraph of the article leads nowhere useful. It ought either to be dropped, or else a suitable article about Shakespeare's Quartos should be added

-Gerdthiele 06:51, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Brandeis
I am fairly certain that I recently saw the First Folio in a display case at the British Library in London, so I am skeptical that Brandeis has the only copy, which the text of this article implies. On the Brandeis site, it is written that Brandeis owns only one of 230 copies. I don't know whether there is one that is definitvely more original than the others, but it seems incorrect to only mention Brandeis in this article. I've removed the Brandeis reference.

-Stephen (64.50.95.2) 23:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * i am afraid, stephen, that you are mistaken. the article claims that there were 1000 first folios, and that 5 belog to the british library. you are thinking about the Quarto version. hope this is helpful.


 * nicholas! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.82.24 (talk • contribs) 10:16, 11 October 2006

More about the content would be good
The First Folios have:

The Jonson preface http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_sig.png The "Mr WH" dedication

Hemynge and Cordell as publishers

... and successors in the second and third folios, which are equally important.

I'm writing this from memory... can't we add in some of these detail (accurately!) between us? —Preceding unsigned comment added by BenPlouviez (talk • contribs) 23:17, 21 April 2006

Compositor table
Can someone add an explanation to the chart of the work of the various compositors (A through E)? It is not at all clear what those numbers represent: pages? lines? percentages? I can't figure it out.

Done! Ugajin (talk) 18:30, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Printing
What is the evidence, really, that Hemings and Condell compiled the contents of the volume? The introductory epistles with their names attached to them, which is the only basis on know of on which one could try to substantiate this claim, have long been thought by a number of leading Shakespearean scholars, to actually be the work of Ben Jonson, a much more likely party to have been directly involved in the acquisition and editing of materials for the volume. This claim should either the struck, modified, or documented. Thanks!

First folio portrait is Oxford proof?
Allegedly the collar's edge in the famous First Folio "Shakespeare" portrait has two faint, but visible letters spelling "EO". If that doesn't mean "Earle Oxenford" can you please provide a better explanation? 87.97.101.54 (talk) 20:48, 29 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes. They don't exist. Paul B (talk) 10:16, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Title
Why is the article title in italics? Shouldn't it be non-italicized? Also, what is the Wiki code that created the italicized title, in the first place? I was not able to spot any such code, when I went into the edit box. Thanks! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC))


 * Italic titles for articles whose title is a title of a work have been implemented by people who are enthusiastic about them following lengthy discussions (I'll see if I can find a link). You can find the code in Template:Infobox book. --GuillaumeTell 11:05, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but I am totally confused. Are you saying that the article title should be italicized ... or should not?  And, how about its use throughout the article?  The term "First Folio" always appears non-italicized throughout the entire course of this article.  For consistency, we should either consider "First Folio" the name of a book (and thus italicize it throughout the article and in the article title) ... or not (and thus un-italicize it throughout the article and in the article title).  Or am I missing some other considerations here?  Please advise.  Thanks.   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC))


 * All I know about this is through discussion on the Opera WikiProject talk page (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Opera/Archive_97). I'm assuming that books are supposed to be treated in the same way, and that's what Wikipedia policy says here: Article_titles.  Don't shoot the messenger! --GuillaumeTell 16:17, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The Manual of Style has some guidelines on what should and should not be shown as italic. For titles of works in article text they generally hould be in italic. Chapters or minor works etc. generally shouldn't. For the title of Wikipedia articles there is no consensus (and the Manual of STyle doesn't mandate either way); but there's a bunch of people who are being activist on this issue. I had suspected, and Guillaume confirms here I think, that these people have managed to get the infobox book template changed so that by merely including it in an article it will also make the title of the article display as italic (this is wrong in so many ways, but I digress). However, the “First Folio” is not the title of the work (that would be Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies) and so should not be italicized (a folio is a particular size and binding of book, but completely generic and not specific to Shakespeare). Anyways, in thinking about this it will help if you consider the article's title as a separate issue from uses of titles of works in the body of the article. --Xover (talk) 16:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Correct. I agree ... "First Folio" is not the name of the book.  Rather, it is just a generic description of the book, if you will.  That is what prompted my original question ... why is the article title of First Folio listed in italics?  From all of the responses above, I gather that the italics are "forced" by use of the Infobox Book template.  But, in this particular case, that "forced" format is incorrect.  I assume that there must be a way to fix that.  Any suggestions?  Thanks.   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC))


 * The template has an option to not italicise the title, so I've added that option to the infobox and Hey Presto! --GuillaumeTell 17:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * A-ha! Perfect!  Thanks!   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:32, 9 May 2011 (UTC))

Too advanced
This text is nearly incomprehensible to somebody like me, who has no idea what Q1, Q3, etc. means. There is no explanation in the text, and no link to any explanation. I think this article should be deleted and rewritten from scratch so that it is a general encyclopedia article instead of a Shakespeare encyclopedia article. Short of that, somebody needs to do a lot of work to make it useful to anybody other than Shakespearean scholars. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.28.250.194 (talk) 21:39, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Added an explanation for the Qn labels. What else specifically in the article do you think needs improvement? Double sharp (talk) 13:01, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

British Library
I think the following text needs some work: "The British Library holds the following copies: 1st impression (1623) – 2 copies; 2nd impression (1632) – 5 copies; 3rd impression (1663) – 1 copy, total 8 copies." What is termed the "second impression" here is actually referring to what is known as the Second Folio, not the First. The same for the Third Folio and the Fourth Folio. So by that rationale the British Library holds only two First Folios. --AnnaGriffiths (talk) 11:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Use by Umberto Eco?
Shouldn’t be somewhere mentioned that a copy of the First Folio is crucial element in the development of the story of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco?

-- Ceplm (talk) 10:26, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, and that "somewhere" is already correctly the article on Eco's novel. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:46, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I meant that many articles on Wikipedia have section like In popular culture and whether this article couldn’t use one as well. -- Ceplm (talk) 12:19, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
 * These sections are generally frowned upon – see WP:POPCULTURE. They act like fly paper and attract bizarre entries about breweries, wineries, comics, etc. as in the Falstaff section you point out and which ought to be removed entirely. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:51, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, frowned upon or not the only alternative is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Falstaff&limit=500 which is quite useless, but anyway. -- Ceplm (talk) 13:20, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Comparison with Good and Bad Quartos - Boxed Image
The three texts displayed show major differences between the text of the First Folio and the Bad Quarto, but only trivial differences with the Good Quarto. Is it worth having the Good Quarto text? If it is, perhaps an explanation would help?Thomas Peardew (talk) 20:21, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

St Omer Copy
" "Neville", written on the first surviving page, indicating that it may have once been owned by Edward Scarisbrick." The reader misses some unstated connection here.--Wetman (talk) 04:51, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * And it was uncited. I've clarified and rectified that. Davidships (talk) 22:13, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Eric Rasmussen
Disambig needed. The BBC mention makes him notable, if nothing else (I didn't look). See Talk:Eric_Rasmussen. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:00, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Scott
Raymond Scott, who probably stole the Durham First Folio, but was only convicted of 'handling' it, died in March 2012, not in 2013 as the article states. The date is correctly given in the BBC report which the footnote links to. The confusion probably arose because the inquest was not held till late 2013. And although the article, citing another BBC report, values the Durham copy at £15m, this is a bit daft. If you look at Durham University's own webpage on the First Folio, they say (though no doubt downplaying the value a bit to avoid attracting more thieves) that the damage inflicted by Scott - he took off the binding and flyleaf because they had identifying stamps on them - reduced the value from £3m to £1.5m. 87.115.26.192 (talk) 19:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)Hugo Barnacle

William Shakespeare
He was black 151.47.73.112 (talk) 08:04, 13 December 2022 (UTC)