“The True Originall Copies”

Extract

In 1623 John Heminge and Henry Condell attempted to end the controversy about what Shakespeare really wrote by issuing the First Folio, “Published according to the True Originall Copies.” But what they settled with one hand they stirred up with the other. They dropped a casual remark about the author's unblotted papers, in reference to the ease of his writing, that proved to be a potent dose of intellectual catnip. The image of those immaculate papers received direct from the hand of the greatest writer we know floats before a scholar's eye like a vision of the Grail, intoxicating his mind with the tantalizing suggestion that a literary work of matchless perfection once existed, embodying the pure intention of the author before it was corrupted by performance in the theatre and by the lamentable shortcomings of printers.