When Shakespeare was a boy, hardly anyone owned books.
Just a century earlier, in 1455, Johannes Gutenberg had developed movable type. This made it possible for a printer to use separate pieces of type to print each letter. It also made it possible to print many copies of a book. Before then, books were handwritten, expensive, and mainly limited to official and scholarly subjects. They were mostly written in Latin.
By the time Shakespeare became a playwright, the book business was still new. Many of the early editions of his plays were filled with printing errors. However, they are still valuable, because they contain lines that aren’t printed in the First Folio, which was printed after Shakespeare’s death. So, what are the “real” versions? Join the debate.
