False Folio

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False Folio is the name scholars give to William Jaggard’s 1619 printing that brought together ten Shakespearean and related plays in one volume. The edition likely involved bookseller Thomas Pavier, whose initials appear on the title pages as “printed for T.P.” Today only two complete copies survive: one at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and another in the Special Collections at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

Although called a folio, the books were printed in a larger-than-usual quarto format, not a true folio. The term “false folio” signals that it imitates the later, official folios of Shakespeare’s works. Some scholars also refer to the collection as the Pavier Quartos, or, to stress collaboration, the Pavier-Jaggard Quartos.

Jaggard did not have clear rights to all the plays, and some texts appeared with false dates or with the names of the original stationers on the title pages, mimicking earlier quartos. The ten plays included Pericles (printed after The Whole Contention due to how the sheets are numbered), with the other nine bound together in no fixed order. There is evidence that Jaggard may have lacked rights to Hayes’ Merchant of Venice, Butter’s Lear, and Johnson’s Merry Wives, among others.

Scholars such as Pollard, Greg, and Neidig examined these texts, viewing them as pirate-like reprintings. Pollard’s Shakespeare Folios and Quartos provides a detailed account, focusing on issues of piracy and rights. By the early 21st century, researchers tended to see Jaggard and Pavier as part of a complicated publishing world, not simply as villains. Jaggard’s earlier act of printing The Passionate Pilgrim as Shakespeare’s adds to the puzzle. The First Folio, begun around 1621, appeared a few years later and came from the same circle of printers and publishers.