The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare

If the rarity of a book depended on nothing more than the scarcity of extant examples, the first collected edition of the dramatic works of William Shakespeare (London 1623) could not be thought a particularly rare book. Nor, judged by the standards of other times and places, could it be pronounced a remarkably beautiful product of the printers' art. Numerous copies have survived, and many other books, of both earlier and later date, are handsomer. But if not by the adccidents of time made extremely scarce, if neither especially rare nor unuswually beautiful, the First Folio is none the less one of the most precious of all books. And its worth is intrinsic, not accidental: it is of inestimable value for what it is, for what it contains. Its beauty and its rarity lie within. For here are preserved the masterworks of the man universally recognized as our greatest write; and preserved, as Ben Jonson realized at the time of the original publication, not for an age but for all time. ~ First paragraph of the Introduction, by Charlton Hinman.