# The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus (the Folger quarto, 1594) > William Shakespeare - 1594 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/william-shakespeare/titus-andronicus-1594-quarto-folger/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-26 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** William Shakespeare - **Date:** 1594 - **Medium:** Letterpress printing on laid paper, quarto format (four leaves per sheet) - **Dimensions:** Approximately 17.0 x 12.7 cm (leaf size given as 6 11/16 by 5 inches in Bartlett's 1939 census); the first leaf, presumably blank, is wanting - **Object type:** Printed book - **Period:** Elizabethan England, sixteenth century - **Current location:** Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A cheap London pamphlet of 1594, the sole surviving copy of Shakespeare's first printed play, spent roughly a century in a private Swedish household, glued at some point to two eighteenth-century lottery handbills used as makeshift endpapers, before a postal clerk in Malmo connected a newspaper story about an expensive old Bible to the worn little book he had inherited. Henry Clay Folger bought it in January 1905 for GBP 2,000 through his regular London agents, and it has been at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington since the Library's founding in 1932.Its significance goes beyond rarity. Because this quarto was believed lost, a later reprinter's invented ending, patched in after his own copy suffered damage, was read as genuine Shakespeare for roughly three centuries. This copy's rediscovery corrected that text for the first time since 1600. The play's authorship is itself unsettled: a century of scholarship argues over how much of it, if any, was written by George Peele rather than Shakespeare alone, a dispute this record states as open because named scholars on both sides remain unpersuaded by each other.The photograph used here is the Folger Shakespeare Library's own image of this exact copy, released by the Library into the public domain; no other copy of this edition exists anywhere to confuse it with. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **by 1794** Charles Robson (1735-1794), of Stockholm, Sweden `[documented]` (ownership) Established solely by Robson's name inscribed on the back flyleaf of the volume. No independent record of who he was, or how the quarto reached Sweden from London, has been traced. - **by 1845-1877** P.M. Krafft (fl. 1845), grandson of Robson through a daughter `[documented]` (inheritance) A Swedish inscription dated 1845 records the transfer. The inscription is the only evidence for it; no external record corroborates the family relationship it describes. - **1877-January 1905** Petrus Johannes Krafft, postal clerk, Malmo, Sweden `[documented]` (inheritance and sale) A second Swedish inscription, dated 1877, records the book passing from P.M. Krafft to his son. It remained in Petrus Johannes Krafft's possession, bound with Swedish lottery handbills of about 1770 as improvised endpapers, until its recognition in 1904 and sale in January 1905. - **January 1905-1930 (Henry Folger's death) / 1936 (Emily Folger's death)** Henry Clay Folger (1857-1930) and Emily Jordan Folger (1858-1936) `[documented]` (purchase) Purchased for GBP 2,000 through the London booksellers Henry Sotheran Ltd, Folger's regular agent, in a private treaty sale rather than at auction. To preserve Folger's anonymity as buyer, Sotheran's own records initially entered the purchase as stock, with no buyer named. - **1930/1932-present** Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. `[documented]` (institutional transfer) Henry Folger died in June 1930, two years before the Library he had built opened to the public in 1932; the collection he and Emily had assembled, including this quarto, passed to the Library on its opening. ## Open questions - Who was Charles Robson beyond the name and dates (1735-1794) inscribed in the book itself? No independent biography of him has been traced. - How and when did an English playbook printed in London in 1594 reach a private household in Sweden? Nothing documents the book's crossing or its first decades there. - Is the family's own record of its 1845 and 1877 transfers within the Krafft line corroborated anywhere outside the book's own inscriptions? No external document has been found. - Precisely how much of the play, if any, was written by George Peele rather than Shakespeare? Named scholars using comparable methods disagree, and the historiography runs from 1905 to the present without resolution. - Was Titus Andronicus composed in 1591-92 or 1593-94? The composition date remains disputed; David Farley-Hills reopened the question in 2000 without settling it. - Does the manuscript that supplied the First Folio's added fly scene (3.2) survive anywhere, unrecognised, or is it lost? Editors infer its former existence from the text alone. ## Sources - [1] Heather Wolfe, "Titus Andronicus, first edition: Only surviving copy of Shakespeare's first printed play," Shakespeare Documented, Folger Shakespeare Library. - [2] Folgerpedia, "Titus Andronicus" (early editions and call numbers). - [3] Shakespeare Census, copy record SC #1523, Titus Andronicus, First Edition (1594), STC 22328, Folger Shakespeare Library. - [4] Adam G. Hooks, "Romeo and Juliet, first edition," Shakespeare Documented, Folger Shakespeare Library. - [5] Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, "An Introduction to This Text: Titus Andronicus," Folger Shakespeare Library editions. - [6] "Textual Notes: Titus Andronicus," Folger Shakespeare Library editions. - [7] Wikipedia, "Authorship of Titus Andronicus." Tertiary source surveying the scholarly literature; flagged for replacement with the primary studies it summarises, principally Brian Vickers, Shakespeare, Co-Author (Oxford University Press, 2002), MacDonald P. Jackson's 1979 and 1996 studies, and Hugh Craig and Arthur F. Kinney, Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2009). - [8] Folgerpedia, "Henry Clay Folger" (biography, collecting practice, and the Folger Shakespeare Library's founding). - [9] Folgerpedia, "Shakespeare, Life of an Icon" (2016 exhibition record, curator and dates). - [10] Shakespeare Census, copy records SC #1524 (Edinburgh University Library) and SC #1525 (Henry E. Huntington Library), Titus Andronicus, Second Edition (1600), STC 22329. - [11] World Digital Library / Library of Congress, "Titus Andronicus," item 11291 (full digitisation of the Folger copy). - [12] Wikimedia Commons, File:Shakespeare Titus Andronicus Q1 1594.jpg, file description page and extended metadata. - [13] Wikimedia Commons, File:Titus Andronicus F1 (1623).jpg, file description page and extended metadata. - [14] Wikimedia Commons, File:Titus Q3 (1611).jpg, file description page and extended metadata. - [15] Wikimedia Commons, File:Henry Clay Folger.jpg, file description page and extended metadata. - [16] Wikimedia Commons, File:Aaron and Tamora (Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 3) MET DP870112.jpg, file description page and extended metadata. - [17] Wikimedia Commons, File:Titus Andronicus, act IV, scene II painted by T. Kirk ; engrav'd by J. Hogg.tif, file description page and extended metadata. - [18] Sara Schliep, "Acquiring the Vincent First Folio: A Bibliophilic Drama in Two Parts (Part 1)," The Collation, Folger Shakespeare Library, 21 November 2023. - [19] T.S. Eliot, "Seneca in Elizabethan Translation" (1927), reprinted in Selected Essays (1932). Quoted here via secondary aggregation; flagged for verification against the primary essay text. - [20] The Shakespeare Blog, "Slaughter in the streets: Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus" (on the play's critical reputation and Peter Brook's 1955 Stratford production). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.