No other copy of Shakespeare has had such distinguished readers. Charles I, who was 15 when Shakespeare died, owned this volume of collected plays, probably reading it while he was imprisoned during the Civil Wars. He has annotated it, for example writing ‘Malvolio’ next to Twelfth Night on the contents page: perhaps Charles knew the plays by alternative names. After Charles’s death this book was owned by his attendant Sir Thomas Herbert; later it passed into the library of the Shakespeare scholar George Steevens, at whose library sale in 1800 it was bought by George III, who also read and annotated this copy.