Which two actors prepared Shakespeare's First Folio for publication?

John Heminges and Henry Condell prepared Shakespeare’s First Folio for publication.

Both men were actors and members of Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men. Their names appear in the First Folio’s dedication and prefatory material, where they presented the volume as an effort to preserve Shakespeare’s plays in more reliable form. They claimed to have corrected texts that had previously circulated in incomplete or unauthorized versions.

The First Folio, published in 1623, collected 36 plays. It preserved works that had not previously appeared in quarto, including Macbeth, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Julius Caesar. Without the volume, the texts of roughly 18 plays would not have survived in their familiar form.

Heminges and Condell were the editors or compilers representing the acting company, but they did not print the book themselves. The publishing operation involved stationers Edward Blount, William Jaggard, and Isaac Jaggard. This distinction explains a common mix-up: Jaggard and Blount were publishers and printers’ partners, whereas Heminges and Condell were Shakespeare’s actor-colleagues who assembled the theatrical materials.