Shakespeare’s Book

The true story of how the First Folio creators made ‘Shakespeare’

The year 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, known today simply as the First Folio. It is difficult to imagine a world without The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale and Macbeth, but these are just some of the plays that were only preserved thanks to the astounding labour of love that went into creating the first collection.

Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio charts, for the first time, the manufacture of the First Folio against a turbulent backdrop of seismic political events and international tensions that intersected with the lives of its creators. Shakespeare scholar Dr Chris Laoutaris uncovers the friendships, bonds, social ties and professional networks that facilitated the production of Shakespeare ’ s book, as well as the personal challenges, tragedies and dangers that threatened its completion. And he considers how Shakespeare himself, before his death, may have influenced the ways in which his own public identity would come to be enshrined in the First Folio, shaping the transmission of his legacy to future generations and determining how the world would remember him ‘not of an age, but for all time’.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR SHAKESPEARE AND THE COUNTESS

‘A splendid and original book’
Sunday Telegraph, Book of the Week

‘ Fabulous! … A gripping tale that enables us to see Shakespeare in a new light … I could not recommend it highly enough'
Alison Weir

‘Greatly enjoying Shakespeare and the Countess … Fascinating how much archives can still yield’
Stanley Wells

‘A work of historical and literary detection which takes us straight to the heart of religious politics in Elizabethan England … there is a great deal to admire in this hugely ambitious book’
Frances Wilson, New Statesman

About the author

Dr Chris Laoutaris is a biographer, historian, poet,
Shakespeare scholar and Associate Professor at The
Shakespeare Institute.

He is the author of numerous academic publications and his
most recent commercial book, Shakespeare and the
Countess: The Battle that Gave Birth to the Globe (Penguin),
was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize for Biography,
was Observer Book of the Year, Telegraph Book of the
Year, one of the New York Post’s ‘Must-Read Books’, and
one of the Daily Telegraph’s top ten history holiday reads.

Laoutaris is the recipient of the Morley Medal in English and the Ker Memorial Prize in English. He has reviewed for many academic publishers and journals; has written for the Financial Times, Sunday Express, Times Higher Education Supplement, and BBC History Magazine, among others; and has provided historical and Shakespearean consultancy to the Royal Shakespeare Company and numerous film and documentary production companies.