Library of Birmingham

This copy was purchased from Bernard Quaritch in 1881 for £240 by the Shakespeare Memorial Library. The collection is now part of the Library of Birmingham, which also possess a Second and a Third Folio. In 1864, to celebrate the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth, a local Birmingham Shakespeare club created the Shakespeare Memorial Library. In 1879 a fire destroyed the almost entirety of the library, including a made-up First Folio composed of 300 original leaves completed by facsimiles. The collection was rebuilt with the help of donations and, in 1881, the library was able to acquire the current copy owned by the Library of Birmingham; they also acquired a copy of the Fourth Folio. The library, both the original and the new one, owe much to Samuel Timmins, a Shakespeare scholar, who worked hard to create the library. In this copy, signature K3 appears twice in Much Ado about Nothing: one is conjugate with K4 and the other one is a half sheet of just K3. However, it is not clear why this half sheet has been inserted.