Of the Clark Library’s eighteen pre-1640 quarto editions of Shakespeare’s plays, first-edition copies of The Merchant of Venice and Othello are two of the collection’s rarest items. William A. Clark Jr. bought widely in English literature and drama of the Tudor and Stuart eras, including hundreds of playbook quartos and books of poetry written by Shakespeare’s contemporaries. The Library also owns all four Shakespeare folios published in the seventeenth century and several nineteenth-century promptbook copies of Shakespearean plays, two of which were owned and annotated by the actor Frederick B. Warde.

The most excellent history of the Merchant of Venice London, 1600

The Tragœdy of Othello, The Moore of Venice
London, 1622