Three years ago, a copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio exchanged hands for nearly $10m at Christie’s, New York, becoming the most expensive work of literature ever sold at auction. What made the price all the more extraordinary was that this was not a unique artefact, like a medieval manuscript, but one of 233 known to have survived, from about 750 copies. The British Library alone owns five of them.
Nevertheless, the First Folio holds a hallowed space, both within the English-speaking world and beyond. Though the majority of copies are in the US, more than a dozen have found their way to Japan. From today’s perspective, this is not surprising. Shakespeare is the world’s most performed playwright, whose name is as familiar in the classroom as on the stage.
