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False Folio is the term that Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers have applied to the earliest attempt to create a collection of Shakepearean works in a single volume, that being William Jaggard's printing of ten Shakespearean and pseudo-Shakespearean plays together in 1619. The term "false folio" was chosen to evoke the folio collections of Shakespeare's works that appeared later in the seventeenth century — the First Folio of 1623 and its successors. the word "folio" is not strictly accurate in this context, since the ten plays were printed in a larger-than-usual quarto format, not in folio; but the key qualifier is false folio. Modern understanding of the circumstances of the False Folio was developed in the early twentieth century, primarily by the bibliographers Alfred W. Pollard, W. W. Greg, and William J. Neidig. Pollard provides a detailed account in his Shakespeare Folios and Quartos. In summary, the stationer and printer William Jaggard reprinted ten plays (authentically Shakespearean or belonging to the Shakespeare Apocrypha) in 1619, either to be bound together in a single volume or issued separately as market conditions warranted. Jaggard, however, did not have clear title to all of the plays involved Stationers Company; Stationers' Register, and therefore he printed some of the texts with false dates and the names of the original stationers involved on the title pages—in effect reproducing the appearance of the earlier quartos. The ten plays were: Pericles was printed after The Whole Contention, since their signatures (the alphanumeric designations of the quires in sequence) run together; but the nine plays were apparently bound together in no particular order. (The few existing collections vary.) As Jaggard lacked rights to Hayes' Merchant of Venice, he may also have lacked rights to Butter's Lear and Johnson's Merry Wives. There is much about the False Folio affair that remains unclear, such as subjective questions of Jaggard's motivation. Jaggard had a previous odd connection with the Shakespeare canon: he had printed the questionable miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim as Shakespeare's in 1599 and 1612. Some Shakespeare scholars have wondered why the King's Men used Jaggard as the printer and one of the publishers of the First Folio, just a couple of years after the False Folio affair. (Work on the First Folio began almost certainly in 1621.) It may have been a case of necessity, since Jaggard had a large-capacity print shop. (He had demonstrated his ability to print a volume of ten plays.)
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