The Norton Facsimile of the First Folio
The play as the 1623 collected edition printed it, photographed page by page.
Every edition is someone’s choices. Here is one of the documents they were choosing from.
You want to see the play before anyone modernised it, and you would like all the other plays as well.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the 1623 printing exactly: the type, the spelling, the columns, the misprints.
Changes: nothing, which is the point and the difficulty. There are no notes, no modern spelling and no help, and Romeo and Juliet is one play among all of them.
A full-size photographic facsimile of the 1623 First Folio, based on copies in the Folger Library’s collection. No modern spelling, no notes.
Whose story is it?
the printers’. You are reading the play as it reached its first readers of the collected works.
How much time does it ask?
A large hardback, 968 pages, edited by Charlton Hinman with an introduction by Peter W. M. Blayney.
W. W. Norton: a full-size photographic facsimile, based on folios in the Folger Library collection.
Where to find it
Buy the hardcover — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Hardcover — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
Common questions
Is the First Folio facsimile only Romeo and Juliet?
No. The Norton Facsimile reproduces the whole 1623 First Folio, so Romeo and Juliet is one play among all of them, in a 968-page hardback. It has no notes or modern spelling.
More ways into Verona: The Folger Shakespeare Library edition · No Fear Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet · The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, ed. René Weis