Neil Packer

The Making of The Complete Plays Limited Edition

This November 2023 marked 400 years since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, one of the great literary wonders of the world. Coming out seven years after Shakespeare’s death, it was the first collected edition of the playwright’s work, and pivotal in cementing his legacy. Without the First Folio, the familiar lines and phrases of 18 of Shakespeare’s plays – including Twelfth Night, Macbeth, The Tempest and Julius Caesar – would not be known today.

The book was the triumph of a dedicated band of editors, printers and publishers, led by John Heminges and Henry Condell, two performers in Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men. Neither had any publishing experience and had to overcome various legal, financial and technical hurdles to bring the book to life. But, in wanting to preserve their friend’s work, they were determined to deliver the best possible version of his plays. So how do you commemorate the 400th anniversary of one of the most significant books of all time? With something very special, of course: a limited edition, three-volume set of Shakespeare’s The Complete Plays.

This time round, a wealth of publishing experience has been brought to bear for the project but, just as with the First Folio, it’s been a hugely ambitious project and a painstaking process. ‘We knew we wanted to celebrate the anniversary, and we knew we wanted to do it in the most glorious way we possibly could,’ says Head of Editorial James Rose

The Making of The Complete Plays Limited Edition

Indeed, while all Folio projects are special, this one felt especially significant. ‘There was no compromise on this,’ explains Production Director Kate Grimwade. ‘It had to be the most exquisite edition of Shakespeare’s plays ever produced.’ Early in the process, Folio’s Art Director Raquel Leis Allion was brainstorming design ideas with illustrator Neil Packer and Publishing Director Tom Walker over dim sum in London’s Chinatown – much as the publishers of the First Folio may have planned their edition in London’s taverns or inns. It was then that Leis Allion brought up the idea of Tudor embroidery for the books’ covers. ‘I knew that Catherine of Aragon had brought blackwork embroidery with her from Spain, which was used on King Henry VIII’s cuffs, shirts and ruffles,’ says Leis Allion. ‘Elizabethans subsequently used the style a lot – there are several portraits of Elizabeth I with this blackwork embroidery. So we thought it would tie in well with Shakespeare, who was of the same era.’To bring that vision to life, Folio embarked on a very special collaboration with Stephen Walters & Sons, a Suffolk-based weaver. ‘It’s always great when you can collaborate with people outside of Folio,’ says Grimwade. ‘Sometimes you work with people who are just doing extraordinary things and bring something completely unique, and that was the case with Stephen Walters.’

The Making of The Complete Plays Limited Edition

The company, founded in 1720 and still owned by the Walters family today, creates custom-designed, bespoke fabric for high-end fashion and furnishing clients and – very occasionally – books. ‘What I think became clear when we started working with Folio was that our values and the way we work are really aligned,’ says Beth Humes, Key Account Manager at Stephen Walters. ‘It’s all about creating completely beautiful products for people who are going to love them for ever.’

For the bindings, illustrator Neil Packer created intricate hand-drawn designs, featuring flowers and a different emblem to identify each volume – a jester’s hat for comedies, a heart and dagger for tragedies, and a crown for histories. ‘It’s a really exquisite design that’s somehow elaborate while being very simple,’ says Grimwade. ‘I think the whole project is a brilliant combination of the old and the new. Neil’s artwork has been scanned, turned into a digital format and then physically woven on a Jacquard loom. I feel like you have to do justice to an anniversary like this and take it to new heights, and with this one we really have.’

Elizabethan blackwork embroidery was crafted by hand, so the bindings are an interpretation of and homage to that, using modern Jacquard weaving techniques but keeping traditional design and materials – in this case, black silk on honey linen for the books themselves. ‘The yarns and other materials that we used are true to what blackwork would have been in the Elizabethan era,’ says Humes. ‘It was about capturing the essence of the technique.’ There is a reverse pattern of silver foil blocked onto black cloth for the case.

The Making of The Complete Plays Limited Edition

When the time then came for the weaving to take place, members of the Folio team went to Suffolk to see the process in action. ‘The results were even better than I’d hoped,’ says Leis Allion. ‘It looks like it could have been made by hand. I was just blown away.’ The fabric was then sent to bookbinder Smith Settle in Yeadon, West Yorkshire. ‘Each book case is individually made and each book is bound by hand,’ says Grimwade. ‘There’s somebody taking the printed pages through the sewing machine. It’s quite painstaking.’

While Folio frequently works with artists and craftspeople from all over the world, this edition is an entirely British production. That includes Packer who, besides creating the designs for the bindings, also illustrated the three volumes. However, the original First Folio only had one illustration – a copper engraving of a likeness of Shakespeare by the acclaimed Flemish artist and engraver Martin Droeshout. Packer used this as inspiration for his own portrait of the Bard facing the set’s letterpress-printed limitation label. For the books themselves, he produced a frontispiece and 38 further original illustrations, one for each play, taking inspiration from playbills of the time – pamphlets and posters handed out to advertise plays. ‘Around that time, red ink first came into production, and playbills started to use black and red,’ says Leis Allion. ‘So Neil’s illustrations use those two colours.’ But, however beautiful the books themselves are, the plays are, of course, the thing. As much attention went into the text as the design itself. There is no perfect copy of the First Folio; in the rush to get it printed, mistakes were made and paper was too expensive to waste. In this edition, however, Folio wanted to present a definitive edition of Shakespeare’s plays.

‘In order to do that we needed the most accurate, the most academic and the most rigorous text that we could get,’ explains Rose, ‘which is why we used the text of the Arden Shakespeare Third Series. Over a hundred years of academia have gone in to creating the texts that we have now, where every word and spelling is considered and compared with previous editions.’

The Making of The Complete Plays Limited Edition

The volumes also feature a foreword by Dame Judi Dench, discussing her special relationship with Shakespeare, and an introduction by Gregory Doran, Artistic Director Emeritus of the Royal Shakespeare Company, reflecting on the history of the plays.

Around 750 copies of the First Folio were printed, of which 235 are known to survive – and just 56 are complete. Its impact, though, continues to be colossal. ‘With this project, a limited edition run of just 1,000, it was always in the back of our minds that we had two goals,’ says Rose. ‘To present the greatest edition of Shakespeare that we possibly could, but also to honour the legacy of the First Folio.’ He’s confident that the Folio team have achieved that, producing something extremely special that will hopefully, like the First Folio, endure for hundreds of years. ‘I’m extremely proud of our edition,’ says Rose. ‘We wanted to produce an heirloom that could be passed down through generations. The lucky owners of The Complete Plays will never need to own another edition of Shakespeare.’