Nothing to get excited about . . . plagiarism wasn’t illegal in Shakespeare’s time; copyright didn’t exist.In fact, the Shakespeare folios which are the source of all our knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays were put together by his friends a decade after his death, from bits and pieces and memory. The reason was that paper was expensive - and that paper tended to get reused on that account. And, most importantly, Shakespeare couldn’t afford to publish his plays for the simple reason that competitors would simply have ripped them off without so much as a nod in his direction.
The publication of the folios was a labor of love and respect by his surviving friends, who couldn’t bear the thought that his genius would be lost to posterity. It was a consuming project, but never intended as a moneymaker. They couldn’t see a mass market for them; their only hope of breaking even was to make a limited number of copies on top-quality paper and sell them to the rich.
They were so hard up that they sold all the copies they made, including the very first copy which they edited to make later copies better. No two folios exactly alike, as updates were done between each folio printed.
This I recall from having read The Millionaire and the Bard, about the acquisition of folios by a Mr. Folger (not the coffee people but John D. Rockerfeller’s right hand man). The collection he amassed is in a library in the shadow of the SCOTUS building (when Folger was going over the plans for his library, he challenged a line item in the budget for air conditioners because he had no experience of them back then). Folger spent years scouting for the site, and years accumulating the real estate without inflating the price exorbitantly - then all of a sudden the government announced that it was using eminent domain to take over the area for use by the Library of Congress.
Folger didn’t take it lying down, tho - he wrote to the Librarian of Congress and notified him what a trove of Shakespeare folios and artifacts he had, and his plan to make his collection publicly accessible. He closed by saying that if he had to give up the site he had acquired, he would have to acquire a different site, which would not be in Washington - and possibly not in the US. The Librarian of Congress had to go back to Congress and get them to change the plan, after having fought for it. But Folger’s was an offer which could not be refused.
I’ve been to the Folger, and yes, their collection is very impressive. The Hunting Library in Pasadena CA also has a First Folio edition, as well as some other material.
side note — The Folger Shakespeare Library, what a great place, open house is annual and approaching fast — its collection of First Folio originals consists of more than half of the surviving originals available in the world. There are other old documents of note, such as, I think it was, Henry VIII’s prayerbook with Hank’s notes in the margins. :^) The study done on the First Folio originals made it possible to classify them by the way they were assembled by the respective printers.