Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true Original Copies. The third Impression. And unto this Impression is added seven Playes, never before Printed in Folio.

The Third Folio, the preferred second issue, complete with Pericles and the other added plays. The traditional estimate of the Third Folio as the rarest of the 17th-century folios is upheld by the online Shakespeare Census maintained by Adam G. Hooks and Zachary Lesser, which locates 184 extant copies, plus 54 fragments. Soon after the printing was completed in 1663, the publisher Philip Chetwind (d. c.1682) learned that seven additional "Shakespeare" plays were available. Recognizing that their inclusion would enhance the appeal of his edition, he had several hundred copies printed with a new title page and the additional plays. The book was reissued with Shakespeare's portrait placed above Ben Jonson's verse and with an expanded title page listing the added plays and dated 1664. This represents the form in which Chetwind intended the book to be marketed and is the issue usually encountered. However, he also made the additional material available to purchasers of the 1663 issue for insertion, with the result that a few copies survive containing both states of the title page, with or without the added plays. Chetwind was originally a clothworker, not a member of the Company of Stationers. When he married Mary, the widow of Robert Allot (d. 1635) - chief rights-holder in the Second Folio - he had to jump through various legal hoops to inherit her husband's copyrights, which, according to the company's usual practices, ought to have lapsed on her husband's death. He also secured rights to Ben Jonson plays, which were utilized in the second folio of Jonson's works (1640/1), published by Richard Meighen. London booksellers and their stock clustered together in St Paul's churchyard, the centre of the book trade in England, operating from stalls and small shops erected between the buttresses. When the old cathedral went up in flames in the Great Fire of London of 1666, it took with it a significant portion of unsold books stored in the churchyard. Book historians have always thought this to be the principal reason for the signal rarity of the Third Folio. Although Chetwind's name alone appears on the title page, other proprietors were Eleanor Cotes, Miles Flesher, William Leake, John Martin, Gabriel Bedell, Thomas Collins, and Alice Warren. The printing itself was divided between Roger Daniel, a second shop (perhaps that of John Hayes or Thomas Ratcliffe), and Alice Warren. Provenance: Sir George Augustus William Shuckburgh-Evelyn (1751-1804), Baronet, Member of Parliament, mathematician, astronomer, and Fellow of the Royal Society (signature dated 1800 on flyleaf, along with a note "Third edit. Much scarcer than the 2d", no. 5628 on pastedown). At his death in 1804, his collection was inherited by his daughter Julia and passed by descent: on Julia's death in 1814 it passed to her husband, Charles Jenkinson (1784-1851, later third Earl of Liverpool); then to Lady Selina Jenkinson (1812-1883), Lord Liverpool's second daughter, whose first marriage was to William Charles Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton (1812-1835); Lady Mary Selina Charlotte Wentworth-Fitzwilliam (1833-1899), only daughter of the above, who married William Henry Berkeley, second Viscount Portman (1829-1919); Henry Berkeley, third Viscount Portman (1860-1923), whose wife Emma Andalusia Frere Kennedy (d.1929) was the widow of Lionel George Henry Seymour Dawson-Damer, fifth Earl of Portarlington (1858-1900); and continued by descent; Christie's London, 25 May 2016, lot 103, £362,500; by private treaty to Peter Harrington. Bartlett 122; Gregg III, pp. 1116-19; Pforzheimer 909; Wing S-2914. Folio (330 x 219 mm), 517 leaves (including additional A1), complete. Engraved portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout in third state. Mid- to late 18th-century polished calf gilt, single-fillet border on sides, flat spine tooled in compartments, red leather label, yellow edges. Housed in a red morocco solander box with chemise by the Chelsea Bindery. Tiny hole in about a doz.…