Folio in 6s (318 x 210 mm). 453 (of 454) leaves: lacking title-page with engraved portrait, supplied in very fine facsimile. Roman and italic types. Double column, 66 lines, headlines and catchwords, pages box-ruled, woodcut title device, head- and tailpieces and initials. (Very fine marginal repairs to A3-A5, affecting a few single letters, these printed in fine facsimile, soiling and pressed creases to the verses leaf, small closed tear to L3v, finely repaired, 4E4 with small hole slightly touching letters, finely repaired, and some soiling and staining to 4E4v, very occasional and light soiling or single spots near margins throughout, expertly washed and pressed.) Early 20th century dark olive levant gilt, spine in 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, gilt-lettered in 2, others elaborately gilt, all edges gilt, gilt-stamp signed by Riviere & Son (spine a touch sunned); slipcase. Provenance: sold, Butterfields, 28 June 2001, lot 1064 (erroneously catalogued as the 1664 issue).

A PREVIOUSLY UNRECORDED COPY OF THE THIRD FOLIO. AN EXCESSIVELY RARE FIRST ISSUE without the portrait on the "To the Readers" leaf and without the seven plays which were added to the second issue. Up until recently, this copy was unrecorded in the Shakespeare Census.

"[The Third Folio] has always been thought to be the rarest of the seventeenth century folio editions but no authoritative figures are available. In any case, copies of this first issue are certainly less common than those of the second judging by the auction records alone. The legend, for the address of Chetwind's shop before 1666 is not known, that a large proportion of the copies of this edition were destroyed by the Great Fire would seem to be substantiated by the records..." (Pforzheimer). The Third Folio's scarcity in commerce is illustrated by the Shakespeare Census of US institutional and private holdings of the four folios, which records 229 First Folios, 379 Second Folios, yet only 184 Third Folios.

Butterfield catalogued this copy as the second issue based on Pforzheimer's pagination changes. But according to McManaway in "New Discoveries in the Third Folio" (in: The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp.469-480), there were numerous other variations in the print run, most notably by the printer Roger Daniel. This copy appears to have a balance of both those first and second issue errors and paginates the same as Fo.3 no.13 (Folger).

Bartlett 121; Greg III, pp.1116-17; Pforzheimer 908; Ed. Adam G. Hooks and Zachary Lesser, Shakespeare Census 7022.5 (this copy); Wing S-2913.