Concurrent Printing, Watermarks, and the Print Run of the First Folio

The question of how many copies of the Shakespeare First Folio were printed has long been the object of informed guesswork rather than knowledge, because of the lack of useful evidence. A new class of evidence, the watermark on each sheet of each surviving copy of the Folio, has recently become available in the Rasmussen and West Descriptive Catalogue of those copies. A new study by Mark C. Hulse uses that evidence to calculate that 1,200 copies of the Folio were printed. This paper interprets the watermarks as providing an extensive new body of evidence which shows that concurrent printing was the norm, even in Shakespeare’s time. That is a fresh vindication of the claim made more than half a century ago by D. F. McKenzie in “Printers of the Mind” and accepted by Charlton Hinman. The paper goes on from this to argue that concurrent printing invalidates the formula devised by Hulse and, therefore, his conclusion that 1,200 copies of the Folio were printed cannot be regarded as proven.