pThe First Folio is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, published in 1623 as emMr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, Tragedies. emThe contents of the book were compiled by Shakespeare's friends and colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell, both actors in the King's Men, the playing company for which Shakespeare wrote. The pair emphasized that the book was meant to replace earlier publications, which they characterised as stol'n and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by frauds and stealths of injurious impostors, asserting that Shakespeare's true words are now offer'd to your view cured, and perfect of their limbes and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.pp Their publication included thirty-six of Shakespeare's plays. Without it, eighteen of the plays, including emMacbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, em and emMeasure for Measure, em might not have survived.pp Facsimile copies of the First Folio are available in print a