A World Without Macbeth, Hamlet, or Romeo?

It Almost Happened.

Shakespeare’s genius was never fully appreciated during his lifetime. People thought of him as just another playwright. Since he never published his plays, the only ones in print were pirated versions often missing entire scenes. Once he was dead and buried, much of his work was forgotten….And it might have remained so but for two loyal friends.

After the Bard of Avon passed on, actors John Heminge and Henry Condell took it upon themselves, in their words, “to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend & Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare.” They determined to publish a collection of all his dramatic works. It was a task that took them years to accomplish. The two men had acted alongside Shakespeare in his plays, and they knew his work in great detail. They painstakingly searched out long lost copies, dredged up missing pages, and convinced playwright Ben Jonson to help them edit the material. They scratched together funds for the project, and finally, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, they were able to publish the plays in one authoritative volume, now known as the First Folio.

“To be or not to be?” Much of Shakespeare wouldn’t be, if not for two devoted fans.

“From the most able, to him that can but spell: there you are number’d.” So begins the note to “the great Variety of Readers” that opens the First Folio. Herminge and Condell were obviously confident that the book would have mass appeal, and they continued in a manner both witty and brazenly mercantile: “Well! It is now publique, & you wil stand for your priviledges wee know: to read, and censure. Do so, but buy it first.”

Herminge and Condell acted in many of Shakespeare’s plays at the Globe Theatre, and were probably among his closest friends. But their main occupation seems to have been fathering children–they had twenty-one between them.

Playwright Ben Jonson wrote about Shakespeare in the preface of the First Folio saying,…“He was not of age, but for all time.”

Many great men and women from out of the pages of history were not considered to be great until well after their death.

The best use of your life,…is to so use your life,…that the use of your life will outlive your life.

William Shakespeare surely did that very thing with the efforts and resources he used while he lived here on earth.

Learn More, Know More, and Become More…………….