_Venus and Adonis_, printed in 1593, and _Lucrece_, printed in 1594, were the only works of Shakespeare published during his lifetime with his consent and coöperation; but sixteen of his plays were printed in quarto size, by various publishers, without his permission. The plays here collected, in folio form, are thirty-six in number, and include sixteen hitherto unpublished,--all the plays, in fact, except _Pericles_. John Heming and Henry Condell, friends and fellow-actors of the dramatist, were professedly responsible for the edition, as appears in their dedication to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery: "... that what delight is in them, may be euer your L.L. the reputation his, & the faults ours, if any be committed, by a payre ſo carefull to ſhew their gratitude both to the liuing, and the dead...." But the chief part of the real editorship is thought to have devolved upon the publisher, Edward Blount of The Bear, Paul's Churchyard, one of the firm pecuniarily responsible for the enterprise. His name and that of Isaac Jaggard, the printer, appear upon the title-page, as the licensed printers, but in the colophon we read that the book was "printed at the charges" of William Jaggard, printer to the City of London, and father to Isaac, Ed. Blount, "I. Smithweeke," or Smethwick, bookseller under the Dial, in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, and William Aspley, bookseller of The Parrots, Paul's Churchyard. The "true originall copies" were probably found in the sixteen unauthorized quarto volumes, previously printed, the playhouse or prompt-copies, and in transcripts of plays in private hands. Heming and Condell touch on this matter in their address "To the great Variety of Readers": "It had bene a thing, we confeſſe, worthie to haue bene wiſhed, that the Author himſelfe had liu'd to haue ſet forth, and ouerſeen his owne writings; But ſince it hath bin ordain'd otherwiſe, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to haue collected & publiſh'd them; and ſo to haue publiſh'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diuerſe ſtolne, and ſurreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and ſtealthes of iniurious impoſtors, that expoſed them; even thoſe are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the reſt, abſolute in their numbers as he conceiued th[~e]." The edition, as published, is thought to have numbered five hundred copies. About two hundred are now known, but of these less than twenty are in perfect condition. The price of the volume when issued was one pound, and the highest price so far paid is seventeen hundred and twenty pounds.