The Saint-Omer First Folio: Perspectives on a New Shakespearean Discovery

Abstract

This article examines the new copy of the First Folio (1623) discovered in November 2014 by Rémy Cordonnier, a rare books librarian at the Bibliothèque d'Agglomération de Saint-Omer (in northern France). The folio belonged to the English College that had been created there in 1594 and was run by Jesuits who taught young English Catholic boys and had a strong tradition of staging plays. As is apparent through the illustrated and documented analyses, two plays appear to have been adapted for dramatic purposes: Henry IV (probably during the second half of the seventeenth century) and Henry V in the course of the eighteenth century.