STC 22305 copy 1, title page
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Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diuerse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friers, by his Maiesties Seruants. Written by VVilliam Shakespeare.
Date: London : printed by N[icholas]. O[kes]. for Thomas Walkley, and are to be sold at his shop, at the Eagle and Child, in Brittans Bursse, 1622.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22305 copy 1, title page
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diuerse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friers, by his Maiesties Seruants. Written by VVilliam Shakespeare.
Date: London : printed by N[icholas]. O[kes]. for Thomas Walkley, and are to be sold at his shop, at the Eagle and Child, in Brittans Bursse, 1622.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22305 copy 1, title page
View online bibliographic record
Folger Shakespeare Library staff, "Othello, first edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/177.
Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 22305 copy 1. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/177.
This is the first edition of Othello, printed in 1622, around eighteen years after it was first written and performed. It was entered into the Stationers’ Company Register on October 6, 1621 by Thomas Walkley, who then had it printed by Nicholas Okes.
The text that appears in this quarto and the text that appears in the First Folio, printed only a year later, are vastly different. Scholars believe that this is a result of two different manuscripts being used for the typesetting. The quarto version is the only Shakespeare quarto to have act divisions notated, and it might have been set from a scribal presentation copy of the play from near to the time when it was first written. The First Folio, on the other hand, seems to have been set from a later revision of the play, and includes sections such as Desdemona’s Willow song (Oxford Companion 330).
The copy shown above is one of fourteen recorded in the English Short Title Catalogue, and is one of two owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library. It was acquired by Henry Folger from the Sotheby’s sale of the Curzon-Howe family library in December 1907.
To learn more about the plot and early printing history of Othello, please see the Folger’s Shakespeare's Works and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto site, which also contains information about additional copies of this edition.
Written by Folger Shakespeare Library staff
Sources
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. General editor, Michael Dobson and associate general editor, Stanley Wells, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 330.
Martin Wiggins, in association with Catherine Richardson. ""1437. The Moor of Venice."" In British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue. Vol. 5, 1603-1608. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): 129-135.
Last updated January 25, 2020
