First collection of Shakespeare’s plays sells for almost $10 million

An employee of Christie's auctions holds a 1663 rare first folio of 36 Shakespeare works that was sold for a record 8.4 million dollars $9.97 million in the Manhattan borough of New York City.

Credit: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

The first collection of William Shakespeare’s plays has sold for almost $10 million, a new auction world record.

The First Folio, a rare book dating from 1623 that initially brought together Shakespeare’s plays, sold for $9.97 million on Wednesday (October 14), Christie’s auction house in New York confirmed.

The auction price marked a new world record for any printed work of literature at auction, Christie’s said, surpassing the previous record of $6.16 million for another copy of the First copy that went under the hammer in 2001.

The identity of the new buyer of the collection, which was given an estimated value of around $6 million prior to its sale, is not currently known.

‘Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies’ was compiled seven years after the death of the playwright and poet by his friends.

A Christie's auctioneer dropping the gavel on a 1663 rare First Folio of 36 Shakespearean works.

Credit: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Containing 36 of the Bard’s plays including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra, it is one of just six complete copies that exist in private hands.

“Idioms such as ‘be-all and the end-all’ and ‘one fell swoop’, both from Macbeth, might never have entered the popular lexicon if not for this literary masterpiece,” Christie’s said prior to the auction.

The compilation had been put up for auction by Mills College, a private women’s liberal arts and science college in California, and was the first complete copy to come on the market for almost two decades.

The First Folio contains all of the Shakespearean works except for Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and the Two Noble Kinsmen, in addition to the playwright’s two ‘lost plays’.

Eighteen of the plays had previously been published in the form of quarto pamphlets.

However the First Folio is considered to be the only reliable text for more than half of the works featured, and it set down 18 plays for the first time ever.

An initial 750 copies of the First Folio were initially printed across a two-year period in the 17th Century. Of these, 235 are currently thought to still exist.

One edition of the First Folio that was sold by Oxford University in 2003 fetched £3.5 million at auction.