Dramatic Works of Shakespeare. The Text of the First Edition. Illustrated with Etchings. (in 8 volumes)

Hard cover, 8vo in publisher's original green cloth blocked with publisher's logo of robed figure in gilt to lower left front board, with play titles to spines in gold, Edinburgh 1883 to foot. Top edge trimmed, others untrimmed. Front matter of laudatory dedications by Ben Johnson and others, Preface, and a modern version of Martin Droeshout's seventeenth-cent. portrait of the Bard. Tissue guarded frontispiece etching after M. Pille, plus additional full page etchings, one per title. Printed on laid paper, Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.**CONDITION: Very Good. A few marks or minor spots of soiling to exterior boards, as seen. A few bumped corners and crimping, mild shelf wear bottom edges. Mild fading to the spines. V.1 with 1/2 inch split to cloth at head of spine. Partially opened. A few over-opened pages. Interior is bright with clean illustrations, however, and no foxing seen. No tissue guard to V.1 portrait, hence offset. **Parisian Artist MARCEL PILLE (1867-1943) contributed the paintings from which the illustrations in this volume were taken. He exhibited history paintings with the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris regularly throughout the 1890's. His later focus in book illustration consisted of woodblock prints in some of the very special bibliophile editions of the great fin-de-siècle publishers of Paris, including 1899's "La Mandragore" published by Éduoard Pelletan. A handsome and nicely illustrated edition. Contains The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors, and Much Ado About Nothing, Vol. 1. Love's labour's Lost, A Mid-Summer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like it, The Taming of the Shrew, Vol. 2. All's Well the Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, The Tale of King John, The Life and Death of King richard the Second, Vol. 3. First Part of Henry the Fourth, Second Part., Henry the Fifth, first part of Henry the Sixth, Vol. 4. Second Part of Henry the Sixth, Third Part Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, Henry the Eighth, Vol. 5. Troyllus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Vol. 6. Tymon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, Vol. 7. King Lear, Othello, Anthonie and Cleopatra, Cymbeline. Vol 8. A handsome and nicely illustrated edition. Musée d'Orsay database, BnF on artists. (AMJ).…