The First Folio contains 36 of Shakespeare's plays.
Published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, the First Folio was assembled by John Heminges and Henry Condell, fellow actors in Shakespeare's company. Its full title was Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, and it grouped the plays into those three categories.
The volume is especially important because 18 of its plays had not previously appeared in print. Without the First Folio, works such as Macbeth, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Julius Caesar might have been lost or survived in much less reliable forms.
The number is sometimes confused with the total number of Shakespeare plays. The First Folio has 36, but the broader Shakespeare canon includes additional works, including Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen, which were not included. Some plays also have disputed or collaborative authorship.