Note 58 — Chapter X · PRICES OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS

Steevens’s remarks, given in another page of Dibdin’s “Library Companion,” are worth quoting here, more particularly as that Shakesperian commentator gives his opinion of what was a high price for the first folio: “I have repeatedly met with thin flakes of pie-crust between the leaves of our author. These unctuous fragments, remaining long in close confinement, communicated their grease to several pages deep on each side of them.... Most of the first folios now extant are known to have belonged to ancient families resident in the country. Since our breakfasts have become less gross, our favourite authors have escaped with fewer injuries.... I claim the merit of being the first commentator on Shakespeare who strove with becoming seriousness to account for the present stains that disgrace the earliest folio edition of his plays, which is now become the most expensive single book in our language; for what other English volume without plates, and printed since the year 1600, is known to have sold, more than once, for £35, 14s.?”