FIRST FOLIO OF SHAKESPEARE, A TRANSCRIPT OF CONTEMPORARY MARGINALIA IN A COPY OF THE KODAMA MEMORIAL LIBRARY OF MEISEI UNIVERSITY

Tokyo: Yushodo Press Co., Ltd, 1998. cloth. Shakespeare, William. large 8vo. cloth. 357 pages. First edition. This book presents a faithful transcription of marginal annotations by an early seventeenth-century Scottish reader of Shakespeare's First Folio (1623), which is now in possession of the Meisei University Library. As primary source material for research, this "diplomatic" transcription, accompanied by more than 40 photographic reproductions of the Folio pages, offers the most reliable information as well as the most definite proof of the rising readership of the day, not only of Shakespeare's plays, but also of books in general. A long Introduction precedes the transcription, which is equiped with textual and explanatory footnotes. Also prepared at the end of the book is a glossarial index that records a large number of words that are not found in the Oxford English Dictionary and many Scottish words as well.