Today, April 23, is Shakespeare’s birthday! Maybe. Supposedly. It was certainly the date of hi

Today, April 23, is Shakespeare’s birthday! Maybe. Supposedly. It was certainly the date of his death in 1616, but it also commonly celebrated as the date of his birth, some 52 years earlier in 1564.

Several editions of the Bard’s works were printed before his death, but the most complete and most famous collections of his plays are the large folio editions, produced posthumously.

While these beautiful and rare 17th century Shakespeare folios are a significant improvement over the earlier “bad” quarto versions, they are far from perfect copies of Shakespeare’s works.

In the case of own Fourth Folio, it appears as though a previous owner sought to correct some of the numerous typographical errors throughout the volume. Our dutiful annotator has also added several marginal notes commenting on various passages in the text.

Some of these typos really change the meaning of the text in humorous ways:

If good? Why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my heir [hair]

- Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3

What if it tempt you toward the Floud, my Lord?
Or to the dreadful Sonnet of the Cliff [summit]

- Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4

My fault is past. But oh, what form of Prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul Mother [murther/murder]

- Hamlet, Act III, Scene 3

All those bored scholars with nothing better to do than overanalyze Shakespeare’s works looking for hidden messages should have a field day with some of these passages.