The Complete Works of Williams Shakespeare is a well-known title, encompassing his plays, epic poems, and sonnets. Several companies publish their own versions, since the texts of Shakespeare's works are in public domain.
Shakespeare's first epic poem, about the goddess Venus and her infatuation with a young man named Adonis who rejects her advances, was entered in the Stationers' Register on 18 April 1593 and printed shortly after. It included a dedication to Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton and Shakespeare's patron, and is "signed" by Shakespeare (in typeface). The poem was popular enough to have a reprinting the next year and another fourteen times before 1640. All printings were in quarto size.
Plays printed in quarto (8-10 inches tall) format in 1594:
Plays published in quarto format in 1595:
Shakespeare's second epic poem, this time a "minor epic" (in which the main characters of a poem are minor characters in another story) about the rape of a young woman named Lucrece by Tarquin, the son of the Roman king, was entered into the Stationers' Register on 9 May 1594. It went through multiple reprints through 1632. In 1616, "The Rape of" was added to the title. In many early collected printings, it is known as "Tarquin and Lucrece."
Plays published in quarto format in 1597:
Plays published in quarto format in 1598:
Plays published in quarto format in 1599:
Plays published in quarto format in 1600:
"The Phoenix and the Turtle," an allegorical poem about the love that cannot be between the mythical phoenix and a turtledove, was published in 1601 in a volume called "Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint." The title poem was by Robert Chester, with additional poems by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marson. The original volume was not entered into the Stationers' Register and was reprinted as "The Anuals of great Brittaine" in 1611.
Plays published in quarto format in 1602:
Plays published in quarto format in 1603:
Plays published in quarto format in 1604:
Plays published in quarto format in 1605:
Plays published in quarto format in 1608:
Plays published in quarto format in 1609:
Shakespeare's sonnet sequence of 154 sonnets was entered into the Stationers' Register on 20 May 1609. The sonnets were not popular enough to warrant another printing until they appeared in a 1640 volume called "Poems: written by William Shake-speare, gentleman," that also included "The Phoenix and the Turtle."
Plays published in quarto format in 1611:
Plays published in quarto format in 1612:
Plays published in quarto format in 1613:
Plays published in quarto format in 1615:
At the age of 52, William Shakespeare passed away at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Plays published in quarto format in 1619:
Plays published in quarto format in 1622:
The First Folio was entered into the Stationers' Register on 8 November 1623 and sold soon after, with the first recorded sale in December to an Edward Dering, who purchased two copies for £1 each. It included 36 of the 38 plays now known as the Shakespeare canon, half of which had never been published previously. Although there were introductory and dedicatory poems by other playwrights, none of Shakespeare's poems appeared in the First Folio. This was the first time more than one play had been collected in one volume and set the standard for subsequent volumes of the Bard's work. It was undertaken by colleagues of Shakespeare's in the King's Men acting troupe, John Heminge and Richard Condell, who sought to not only preserve Shakespeare's plays, but to also present them in an "authorized" format, as the title page declares the plays to be "Published according to the True Originall Copies." It seems they had access to either Shakespeare's manuscripts or what were called "fair papers" from which to print the plays. Printed by William and Isaac Jaggard in London, only 235 known copies exist of the original run of approximately 750 printed, making the First Folio one of the most valuable books in the world. A recent complete and original copy sold at auction for $10 million.
The first reprinting of the First Folio was in 1632, resulting in the Second Folio.
Plays published in quarto format in 1634:
The Folio was reprinted after thirty years in 1663 as the Third Folio. It is relatively rare as most copies were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
The fourth and final printing of the Folio collection is the Fourth Folio of 1685, twenty years after the Third Folio. It retains all 43 plays (37 in the Shakespeare canon) from the Third Folio and is the base text for many collected works in ensuing years. "The Two Noble Kinsmen" and the poetry are still not included.
Nicholas Rowe became the first "editor" of Shakespeare's plays in 1709 with his illustrated, six-volume collection titled, "The works of Mr. William Shakepear."
Nicholas Rowe followed up his six-volume complete works with another set five years later in 1714.
In 1780, Edmond Malone published a complete works that included a volume of the sonnets and poems.
Alexander Chalmers edited a complete works of Shakespeare, printed in Paris, in 1838.
Cambridge University Press published between 1863 and 1866 their complete works in nine volumes.
Rev. Alexander Dyce published in 10 volumes a collected works of Shakespeare in 1876, an expansion of his 1857 6-volume collection.
The Riverside Shakespeare was first printed in 1974 by Houghton-Mifflin and reprinted in 1998. It was the first complete works to both include "The Two Noble Kinsmen" and state the play was at least partially written by Shakespeare. Using "metrical characteristics, vocabulary and word-compounding, incidence of certain contractions, kinds and uses of imagery, and characteristic lines of certain types" it was determined Shakespeare had a hand in writing about half the play, along with his late-career writing partner John Fletcher.
Two other complete works are worth mentioning for their intended audiences.
Works Cited
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