In 1616, Ben Jonson issued a folio volume of nine of his works, called The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. Although some of Jonson's fellow playwrights ridiculed his decision to publish his writings, Jonson's collection granted a new status of respectability to the drama in print, and became an inspirational archetype for Heminge and Condell's 1623 folio volume of Shakespeare's collected plays. Heminge and Condell had been Shakespeare's fellow actors in the Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men). They intended, as outlined in the Preface to the First Folio, to compile Shakespeare's work "without ambition either of self-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare".
They included thirty-six plays in the First Folio, under the headings Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, and, in addition to preparing and correcting the bad quartos by comparing them to the authoritative prompt-copies, they introduced to the Elizabethan readers plays that were previously unpublished in quarto form, including, All's Well that Ends Well, As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, The Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline, Coriolanus, Henry VIII, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Heminge and Condell desired to make the First Folio as handsome as possible, so they added special touches throughout the collection. They decided upon the Droeshout Portrait for the title page, and on the page opposite the picture they chose ten lines by Ben Jonson, praising the lifelike exactness of the portrait. They also took pains to include a list of twenty-six "Names of the Principal Actors in all these plays", and a table of contents. They dedicated the Folio to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, and inserted four sets of verses on Shakespeare by Jonson, Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges, and an enigmatic figure who went by "I.M", possibly English writer and translator, James Mabbe (note that capitals "I" and "J" were the same in the Elizabethan alphabet).
