Only nine years after the First Folio (1623), a second edition was published by a new consortium of investors who had acquired the rights to them–some from Dorothy Jaggard, Isaac Jaggard’s widow, and even some from Thomas Pavier.  Considerable editorial work on this folio was done directly on the pages of the First Folio, most probably in the printing house itself.  There are evident attempts to regularize spelling and grammar and correct typographical anomalies. Scholars have counted almost 1,700 changes from the First Folio, about 800 of which are still accepted by modern editors.  Examples range from changing the old ordinals “fift” and “sixt” to “fifth” and “sixth” and differentiating “to” from “too” and “who” from “whom” to the careful correction of flawed Latin in Love’s Labor’s Lost.

To the preliminary matter of the volume, reprinted from the First Folio, is added John Milton’s poem on Shakespeare which  epigram in heroic couplets is the poet’s first appearance in print.