Shakespeare's First Folio has become one of the most famous books of all time but does not stand alone; it followed Ben Jonson's trailblazing publication of his own Workes a few years earlier and was closely emulated in 1647 by the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher folio. In Four Hundred Years, the story of all three folios is told, including the curious afterlife of Shakespeare's-with its many reproductions, studies of its printing and copy, Folio thefts, and scholar/forger J. P. Collier's attempt to set up a rival to its authority of his own making. Also, the author describes an in-person encounter with an original Beaumont and Fletcher folio over three and a half centuries old and concludes with his own dramatization of how Shakespeare's Folio came to be.

2