Comedies and Tragedies, Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher. First Edition, 1647. Peter Harrington.

Comedies and Tragedies, Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher. London: for Humphrey Robinson, and for Humphrey Moseley, 1647. The Prince of Wales©. Folio (343 x 220 mm). Contemporary dark brown morocco for Charles II as Prince of Wales, gilt-ruled borders and frame with gilt-stamped floral cornerpieces, spine with gilt-stamped daisy in each compartment, gilt-stamped supralibros (three ostrich feathers emerging from a coronet with motto “Ich dien”), marbled endpapers. Engraved frontispiece portrait of John Fletcher by William Marshall in second state (reading “Vates Duplex” for “vates duplex”, and with “J. Berkenhead” in small type), woodcut head- and tailpieces, decorative initials. Bookplate of Robert S. Pirie. Head and foot of spine renewed, title and frontispiece soiled, extreme edges of margins very lightly browned, a handsome volume. First edition, modelled on the first two folio collections of Shakespeare’s plays (1623 and 1632) and the first two folios of the works of Ben Jonson (1616 and 1640–1). These folios are often credited with establishing a recognizably modern concept of the individual author, but the Beaumont and Fletcher folio is more problematic in that regard. It contains 39 plays, of which very few are actually collaborations between Beaumont and Fletcher. Even the preface acknowledges that several are written by Fletcher with Philip Massinger, rather than Beaumont. Editorship is usually assigned to the playwright James Shirley, who wrote the preface.