People love to debate whether Mozart or Beethoven was the greatest composer, or Michelangelo, Rembrandt or Picasso the most legendary painter, or Babe Ruth or Willie Mays the greatest baseball player.
But it’s generally acknowledged that no writer in the English language has ever topped William Shakespeare.
Yet Shakespeare’s genius, most notably as a playwright, might never have been known had it not been for an early compilation of his work — one that’s now on display at Amherst College.
This month, at the Mead Art Museum, the college opened an exhibit based on the Bard’s “First Folio,” the first comprehensive collection of plays by Shakespeare. Scholars believe approximately 750 copies of the Folio were printed in England, in 1623.
Only 233 copies are known to exist today, and several are touring United States college campuses this year to recognize the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, in 1616.
The First Folio offered the first printed versions of 18 of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, including “Macbeth,” “As You Like It,” “The Tempest” and “Julius Caesar.”
It also represented the first time a collection of plays by a single author had ever been published in such a format, says Michael Kelly, head of archives and special collections at Amherst’s Frost Library.
“It was very unusual for its time,” Kelly said.
Christopher Grobe, who teaches English and the history of drama at Amherst, says theatrical writing during Shakespeare’s time was not considered on par with other kinds of literature, such as poetry. And though Shakespeare was a popular and respected playwright in his day, his work might well have disappeared after his death except for the First Folio, he said.
That collection was put together by two of the Bard’s friends and fellow thespians, John Heminge and Henry Condell, at their own initial expense.
Copies of the books sold well enough that additional collections of Shakespeare’s plays — the Second, Third and Fourth Folios — were printed during the ensuing six decades.
But the First Folio is what laid the groundwork for preserving Shakespeare’s work, which got increasing attention in the 18th century and then vaulted into exalted status in the 19th century, Grobe said.
“This is pretty much where it started,” he said.
The Amherst exhibit draws heavily on the school’s own ties. “First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare” has been put together by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., founded by Henry Clay Folger, a member of the Amherst College class of 1879.
Folger would spend much of his adult life building a massive Shakespearian collection (as well as many other rare books and artifacts now housed at the library).
Indeed, the library holds the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s works, including more than 80 First Folios. Eighteen of those copies are traveling across the U.S. this year; they’re being exhibited along with related material at one college in each state.
At the Mead, the First Folio is displayed in a glass case, turned to a page that offers what arguably is Shakespeare’s most famous line, from Hamlet’s soliloquy: “To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
The roughly 650-page book, with a leather-bound, embossed cover, appears to be in surprisingly good shape — a function in part, Kelly notes, of it having been printed on acid-free paper.
In fact, he and Grobe note, the Folio format of printing was considered quite fancy for its day; a number of Shakespeare’s plays had previously been printed as “quartos,” a type of pamphlet that was much cheaper to produce and ultimately more disposable.
The First Folio, by contrast, would have required Heminge and Condell to put their money up front, Kelly said, which made them appeal to the public for sales. In an introduction addressed “To the Great Variety of Readers,” they write of the book, “It is now publique, & you wil stand for your priuiledges wee know: to read and censure. Do so, but buy it first.”
Grobe notes that future transcribers and printers of Shakespeare’s work invariably tinkered with spelling, punctuation, stage directions and even whole lines and scenes from his plays — the existing copies of the First Folio have differences themselves — which makes the book an invaluable reference for any serious study of Shakespeare, or for actors looking to perform his plays as close to the original versions as possible.
“(The First Folio) was put together by the people who knew his work best,” Grobe said. He also noted that the versions of the plays in the book would have been drawn from the working scripts that actors in Shakespeare’s day used.
The Mead exhibit, which runs through May 31, is just one part of a larger series of Shakespeare-related events the college is hosting this month on campus and with other local organizations, such as the Emily Dickinson Museum. For instance, Frost Library is displaying its copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio, printed in 1632.
Other events include a discussion of Shakespeare’s influence on Emily Dickinson’s life and poetry on May 26 and a performance of “Romeo and Juliet” at the Renaissance Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Saturday.
For a full listing of events, visit www.amherst.edu/museums/mead/exhibitions/2016/first-folio