The First Folio contains thirty-six of Shakespeare's plays, fully half of which had never before been printed. Two collaborative plays, Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen, were almost certainly deliberately omitted by the editors either because they knew they were not entirely Shakespeare's own work, or there were problems with the surviving texts or with the rights. A lost play, Love's Labours Won, may have been omitted for similar reasons, or it may be an extant play under a different title. With the probable exception of three pages in the manuscript of the collaborative play Sir Thomas More, now held in the British Library, no contemporary manuscripts or prompt copies of any of Shakespeare's plays survive (three manuscripts of a play called Cardenio, possibly by Shakespeare and Fletcher, survived until the eighteenth century, but are now lost). Without the Folio, therefore, the following eighteen plays may well have been lost forever: All's Well that Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Henry VI part one, Henry VIII, Julius Caesar, King John, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Winter's Tale.

The rights acquired by prospective publishers in the early seventeenth century differed markedly from copyright today. The editors and publishers of the First Folio had to reach terms with those other publishers, such as Pavier, who had already printed a number of Shakespeare plays in quarto. This they did, with the single exception of Henry Walley with regard to his1609 quarto edition of Troilus and Cressida, necessitating the abandonment of work on this play after one and a half sheets of the quire in which Romeo and Juliet ended and Troilus began had been set. Leaves gg3 and gg4 were consequently laid aside. The end of Romeo was reset, and Timon of Athens substituted. At the last minute however, when Jaggard and Blount went to Stationer's Hall to register their rights, a last-minute search of the Register revealed a previous entry for Troilus by James Roberts, whose rights had in fact been inherited by William Jaggard. Last minute negotiation therefore allowed Troilus to be included.

In The First Folio of Shakespeare, Peter Blayney has now established that the first issue of the First Folio was offered for sale in November 1623 without Troilus (three copies survive without the play). "Anyone who bought it obtained a complete book whose contents matched the Catalogue". When Troilus at first became available the printers initially used the discarded leaves gg3 and gg4 (crossing through gg3r which contained the last page of Romeo and Juliet) and then completed the play using a series of arbitrary signatures, without pagination (¶ - ¶¶6 ¶¶¶1): the whole was then inserted in the only likely place, namely at the head of the section of Tragedies to which it had originally been assigned. This second issue has also survived in three copies, with the redundant page of Romeo and Juliet "neatly crossed out from corner to corner, and the leaf-signature 'gg3'...struck through." Finally, "after another detectable delay, somebody either noticed or remembered that the playhouse manuscript of Troilus contained a prologue that had not been included in the 1609 quarto. That provided an excuse for eliminating the crossed-out page of Romeo." Leaf gg3 was cancelled therefore, and a fresh leaf—the last part of the Folio to be printed—substituted, containing the hitherto unprinted Prologue to Troilus on the recto, and the first page of the play reprinted on the verso. The present copy is in this third issue, as is usual.

It is now thought that no more than 750 copies of the First Folio were printed (available unbound at a price of around 15s.). There seems no doubt that the venture was at least a respectable success, with demand strong enough to require a second edition within a decade (the 1632 second folio, printed by the inheritor of Jaggard's shop Thomas Cotes, again for a syndicate of publishers). Out of the c.750 printed, 219 copies are recorded as extant in known locations by Anthony West in his 2003 census (The Shakespeare First Folio. The History of the Book. Volume I. A New Worldwide Census). One must now be added to this total, the University of Durham copy stolen in 1998 and recovered, albeit in a mutilated state, in 2010.

There are seventeenth century manuscript annotations, doodles, and markings to about 34 pages in at least five different hands in this copy of the First Folio. Orthography, script, and proper names all suggest that these marginalia are Scottish in origin; this surmise is further supported by the binding. The marginalia include a number of fragments of prayers and some doggerel verse, but the only response to Shakespeare's text is in the marking of three speeches in Julius Caesar.  However, the annotations include several names, giving important clues to the book's early provenance. The volume evidently belonged to the Gordon family, since at least three members wrote their names in its pages: John Gordon (at least five t.mes s), Joan Gordon (twice), and Alex Gordon (once). Many of the other annotations are in the hands of John Gordon. The longest single manuscript note, a speech asking for Herculean strength "to beatt him That let my love be stolen away when I was sliping", is subscribed "John Frasere with my hand". The name "John Hall" is also found once, as is "Elizabeth burnet".

Folio (330 × 210mm). Nineteenth-century maroon crushed morocco by Maclehose of Glasgow, all edges gilt, marbled endleaves, preserved in red cloth chemise and matching quarter red morocco slipcase. As a book that has been in demand since its appearance, as evidenced by the need for three further editions in the seventeenth century, steady usage and reading has led to virtually all copies of the First Folio, including the present, with leaves in facsimile. This copy has 16 in expert facsimile, all beforeA6 except A5 (i.e. all prelims except Hugh Holland's verses "Vpon the Lines and Life of the Famous Scenicke Poet..." , the first two acts of The Tempest) and the last three leaves (end of Cymbeline, publisher's colophon); several other leaves (c.14) with some marginal repairs, a few other tears (most notably at the inner column of bbb3, where about 29 words have been supplied over are pair; also f1 in Henry IV Part I , near inner margin); some occasional staining and spotting (most noticeably from aaa2 to the end), very slight worming to inner margins from hh1 onwards (chiefly between Timon of Athens and Hamlet), upper hinge starting, slight wear at joints.

West 189; Lee 134; STC22273; Greg p.1109ff; Bartlett 119; Pforzheimer 905; Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos p.108ff; Grolier English 19; PMM 122

Gordon family (among the seventeenth century marginalia in the volume are the names John Gordon (at least five t.mes s), Joan Gordon (twice), and Alex Gordon (once) — ?John Fraser (also wrote in the book in the seventeenth century) — William Stuart Stirling Crawfurd (bookplate) — W.L. Watson (Sidney Lee, Census, 1902, no. CXXXIV) — Professor R.W. Seton-Watson of Oxford (Sotheby's, 9 February 1948, Maggs) — J.G. Hooper (Sotheby's, 17 July 1967, purchased by John Fleming, for Abel E. Berland, of Chicago) — Acquired by Seven Gables Bookshop, 1972 — Acquired by Victor Jacobs of Dayton, Ohio, in the same year (Sotheby's New York, the Victor and Irene Muir Jacobs collects ion), 29 October 1996, lot 419