| 1619 | Thomas Pavier seems to have attempted to assemble a collection of Shakespeare's plays. Only 2 & 3 Henry VI; Pericles; The Merchant of Venice; The Merry Wives of Windsor; King Lear; Henry V; Midsummer Night's Dream and the apocryphal Yorkshire Tragedy and 1 Sir John Oldcastle appeared. |
| 1623 | The First Folio (F1) |
| 1632 | The Second Folio (F2) |
| 1663 | The Third Folio (F3) Second issue of the F3 in the following year includes, for the first time, Pericles. It also adds the apocryphal plays The London Prodigal; The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell; Sir John Oldcastle Lord Cobham; The Puritan Widow; A Yorkshire Tragedy; The Tragedy of Locrine. |
| 1685 | The Fourth Folio (F4) Includes the apocryphal plays added in the second issue of F3. |
| c. 1700 | The 'Fifth Folio' ('F5') Sometime around 1700 a selection of the F4 text amounting to about twentyfive sheets (100 pages) was reprinted and combined with the remaining sheets of F4 to produce a hybrid edition. |
| 1709 | Nicholas Rowe's edition. First edition to have a named editor. Rowe was a respected dramatist in his own right. Includes the first biography of Shakespeare to be published. |
| 1711-12 | Thomas Johnson A Collection of the Best English Plays Published in the Netherlands 'in small Volumes fit for the pocket' -- the series included some Shakespeare titles. |
| 1723-25 | Alexander Pope's edition. |
| 1733 | Lewis Theobald's edition. |
| 1734-5 | Robert Walker's cheap small-format editions of the individual plays, collected (1735) into a 7 volume collected edition. |
| 1734-6 | Jacob Tonson (publisher of the Rowe, Pope and Theobald editions) produces a cut price series of single volume editions in an effort to put Walker out of business. The Tonson editions are collected (1736) into an 8 volume set. |
| 1743-4 | Thomas Hanmer's edition. Hanmer was Speaker of the House of Commons. He provided much of the funding for the edition himself and it was lavishly produced by Oxford University Press. It was the first English edition published outside London. |
| 1747 | William Warburton's edition. |
| 1765 | Samuel Johnson's edition. |
| 1767-8 | Edward Capell's edition. Capell was the first editor to start from scratch with the text -- writing out each play word by word, rather than just marking up the edition of his predecessor. |
| 1773 | George Steevens's revision of Samuel Johnson's edition. |
| 1773-4 | John Bell's edition. Based on the prompt books then being used in the London theatres. |
| 1778 | Isaac Reed's revision of Steevens's Johnson edition. |
| 1790 | Edmond Malone's edition. One of the most scholarly editions of the eighteenth century -- became the dominant edition for the first half of the nineteenth century, providing the base text for many subsequent editions. |
| 1791-1802 | J. & J. Boydell's edition. A lavish edition, carrying illustrations by some of the most eminent artists of the time. |
| 1795 | First American edition published at Philadelphia. |
| 1807 | Francis Douce's edition. First attempt to produce a facsimile of the First Folio (a page-by-page reprint). Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler's The Family Shakespeare. The first attempt to censor Shakespeare to make him suitable for family reading. Published anonymously in this year and subsequently attributed to the editorship of Thomas Bowdler alone. |
| 1821 | A revised edition of Malone, prepared by James Boswell. A 'variorum' edition, extensively listing the comments of previous editors. |
| 1822-23 | Pickering edition. Using miniature type, this was the smallest edition produced to date. |
| 1838-43 | Charles Knight's edition. One of a number of important nineteenth-century editions which included lavish illustrations and which were issued serially, in parts. In the case of Knight's edition, there were 56 parts, which could be bound into 8 volumes. |
| 1859-60 | Mary Cowden Clarke's edition. Clarke was the first acknowledged woman editor of Shakespeare. |
| 1863-6 | Clark, Wright and Glover Cambridge University Press edition. Scholarly and enormously influential, the nine volume Cambridge edition provided the text for the 'Globe' single volume edition, published in 1864 -- one of the most successful Shakespeare editions of all time. |
| 1880-1891 | A collection of facsimiles of the earliest single volume texts, produced jointly by Frederick Furnivall and Charles Praetorius. |
| 1870-1911 | William J. Rolfe edited a wide range of Shakespeare texts during these years. Their significance lies in the fact that they were primarily intended for use by American school children. |
| 1899-1931 | W. J. Craig and R. H. Case's 'The Arden Shakespeare'. The 'Arden' has been twice revised over the course of the twentieth century and has established itself as one of the principal scholarly editions. |
| 1921-66 | John Dover Wilson and Arthur Quiller-Couch's 'New Cambridge Shakespeare'. A complete revision of the Cambridge, controversially drawing upon new theories of editing which had been advanced in the early years of the century. |
| 1937-59 | George B. Harrison's 'Penguin Shakespeare'. An edition of Shakespeare specially devised for the use of literate sea birds. |
| 1951 | Peter Alexander's edition. A widely used single volume edition, produced at the University of Glasgow. |
| 1956-67 | Alfred Harbage's 'Pelican Shakespeare'. |
| 1974 | G. Blakemore Evans's 'Riverside Shakespeare'. The edition most widely used among American college students. |
| 1986 | Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor's 'Oxford Shakespeare'. An enormously controversial edition which, among other things, published two texts of King Lear, arguing that Shakespeare had revised the play to produce two distinct versions. The edition included a 'new' Shakespeare poem -- 'Shall I Die?' -- discovered by Gary Taylor. |
| 1995- | Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan's revision of the Arden (now known as 'Arden 3'). |
| 1997 | Arden 2 is released on CD-ROM, with electronic facsimiles of the original texts included as part of the package. |