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‘CONSIDER NOW, if they asked us, Will you give up your Indian Empire or your Shakespeare, you English: never have had any Shakespeare? Really it were a grave question. Official persons would an­swer doubtless in official language: but we, for our part too, should not be forced, to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire we cannot do with­out Shakespeare!�

In the above well-known passage from his lecture on ‘The Hero as Poet� Carlyle asserts that Shakespeare is a more precious imperial heritage than even India. But, equally the world owes John Heminge and Henry Con­dell an incalculable debt for preserving to us a heritage of priceless value. They prepared and oversaw the First Folio edition of Shakespeare (1623) and without their work which was undertaken in part as a gesture of love and respect towards their colleague, some plays would almost certainly have been lost and others would only exist in garbled versions. The First Folio in India would not have reached the ever sensitive ears of the mediapersons, critics, commentators and students of Shakespeare had the Chief Librarian M.S. Rana not made his prize discovery in the Central Library of Roorkee University. It is estimated that its cost is worth more than 10,00,000 Pounds.

It is a dream of all the students of English Literature to stumble across the First Folio. John Milton, too, must, as a youngman at Cambridge; have been an eager reader of the First Folio. The following lines have been resounding in men’s ears for three centuries which were addressed by a reader who recognised that the editors had gained for England a more precious prize than the conquistadores had won for spain ­

“But you have blessed the living
                        loved the dead:
            Raised from the womb of earth a
                        richer mine
            Than Cortes could with all his
                        Casbeline
            Associates; they did but dig for the gold,

            But you have for treasure much
                        more manifold.�

Shakespeare had penned thirty six plays (thirty seven if we include Pericles which is believed to be not entirely his). Nineteen plays had al­ready appeared before the publication of the 1623 First Folio. They had been published in quarto editions i.e. on paper where a sheet is doubly folded to produce four leaves or eight pages and some of these quartos, notably Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Wives of Windsor Henry V and Hamlet, are of inferior quality. Sometimes the meaning is obscure, speeches are mixed up, word order is confused, unwarranted altera­tions to the text occur. In a folio, a larger size of paper is used, ranging from eleven to sixteen inches in width. The printing of First Folio too had a strong reason for Heminge and Con­dell. Actually there were quarto ver­sions of individual plays, sometimes several quartos of the same play. The editors realising that there were too many (36) plays to present in a quarto edition, turned to the only solu­tion - the heavy expense of printing them in Folio. It is estimated that the Printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio ran to roughly 250 copies, selling at a pound each.

The original idea regarding the First Folio might very well have come from Shakespeare himself in the year of his death. The notion of a collection of all his plays might have appeared to him and he might have brought up the subject in casual conversation with his good friends and companions. Hem­inge and Condell. On the other hand if the conception of an ‘omnibus� volume emanated from the two editors, they must have discussed the scheme with Shakespeare.

The ‘Roorkee University Shakes­peare� as Mr. Rana terms it, in the preamble to the actual plays bears the print “Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Pub­lished according to the True Original Copies. Printed Iffac Jaggard, and Ed. Blount 1623. “The engraving of Shakespeare’s portrait by Martin Droeshout is on the title page of the Folio. Then follow the names of “The Principal actors in all these plays. Also figuring among the Preliminary matter were a poem addressed to the reader; a dedication to William, Earl of Pembroke, and Phillip, Earl of Mont­gomery; an epistle addressed to the great variety of readers, and finally a number of prefatory verses including a lengthy eulogy in praise ofShakespeare from the pen of Jonson, a sonnet by Hugh Holland “Upon the lines and life of the famous Scenicke poet, Master William Shakespeare and two other famous poems to Shakespeare’s memory one by L. Dig­ges, who in his youth had been a near neighbour of Shakespeare and other by John Mabbe of Oxford University. The 993 page volume in double column bears not a scratch of pen or pencil on its pages.

The Roorkeee University First Folio was housed in a specially designed black tin box measuring 45cm x 33cm. The inside lid of the box has an ornate, multicoloured monogram of its manufacturer. The words in the monogram read ‘By appoint­ment to H.E. the Governor of Bombay, manufactured by Goolam Hussein Ismailjee and Bros Karachi and Bom­bay.�

How the First Folio made its entry into the world-famous University of Engineering and Technology needs a serious investigation, but it is being presumed that the prestigious collec­tion of the East India Company’s Mili­tary Seminary Library at Addiscombe in Surrey, England was also amalga­mated with the Thomson College of Engineering (as it was formerly called), in 1862. Perhaps Shakespeare’s First Folio in Roorkee University Library was one of the number of books that were transferred from Addiscombe to the Thomson Col­lege of Engineering Library. The First Folio carries a great pride of place in English Literature for, otherwise it would have been poorer, by eighteen dramatic masterpieces. Equally, the world would not have known the Roorkee University First Folio without the dedication and conscientiousness of M.S. Rana. The Folio is a rarity Congratulations to M.S. Rana for releasing the imprisoned, most valuable volume in the whole range of English literature.

“In the U.S. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are guaranteed. But if life hardly seems worth living, if liberty is used for sub-human purposes, if the pursuers of happiness know nothing of their quarry or the elementary techniques of hunting, these constitutional rights will not be very meaningful. An education in that wise passiveness is recommended by the saints and poets and by all who lived fully and worked creatively.�
-ALDOUS HUXLEY

“In the morning bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogenal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison which our modern world and its literature seems petty and thivial.�
- THOREAU in ‘WALDEN�