A First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, a 1623 volume of the most important book in English literature, sparked feverish bidding at Sotheby’s in London today, eventually selling for £2.8 million.

Moments after the auctioneer opened bids at £1.6 million, two competing buyers - each standing at the back of the saleroom because there was such a crush of onlookers - were pushing the figure up and up.

They were vying for a volume - originally priced at 20 shillings - which has transformed artistic imagination, language, literature and all the performing arts.

Published seven years after Shakespeare’s death, and still in its 17th-century calf binding, the First Folio has 36 plays - of which 18 had never previously been printed. If not for their appearance in this edition, they might otherwise have been lost.

It eventually went to a young man, who had been indicating each extra bid with a nod so subtle it could easily have been missed.

He was buying on behalf of the antiquarian dealer, Simon Finch, who was thought to be buying on behalf of a client.

Looking slightly shellshocked afterwards, the young man declined to comment and disappeared, leaving behind the magnificent volume in its special display case for someone else to collect.

The Sotheby’s auction was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase one of only two known copies left in private hands. The other was sold privately to the late Sir Paul Getty in 2002.

Although 750 copies were originally printed, only a third of them have survived. Most are incomplete. This one had not been on the market for three centuries. Hundreds of people - collectors, dealers, enthusiasts and onlookers - overflowed into a second room, where they had to watch the historic sale on a large screen.

The plays were acted in London playhouses, including the Rose and the Globe, and spaces in the provinces. At the time of Shakespeare’s death in 1616, however, 18 of the plays had not reached print. He seems not to have made any effort in his lifetime to get an edition of his plays published. In his day, plays were written principally to be performed.

Without the First Folio, which was assembled by Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors, plays such as Macbeth and Twelfth Night would not have survived.

Stanley Wells, a leading Shakespeare scholar, said: "There is no guarantee that these unpublished plays would ever have been put into print if the Folio had not appeared. Hundreds of plays of the period are lost, known by their titles alone. The 18 plays by Shakespeare first published in the Folio might easily have suffered a similar fate had it not been for the labours of his friends and colleagues...

"If Shakespeare had been known only by the plays that had reached print before the Folio appeared, the world would have been a different place. Without these plays, the English language would have been far less rich."

This copy is covered with markings and annotations in a mid-17th century hand, offering an extraordinary insight into its early readership.

Someone had jotted down a series of distinct markings such as small circles and dashes and the occasional word such as "wit" and "love" - illuminating a contemporary or near-contemporary reader’s taste and interpretation of Shakespeare’s works.

The 17th-century reader had marked a number of lines that we regard today as among the most famous passages - such as Hamlet’s "To be or not to be" speech.

With circles, dashes and vertical lines, someone had indicated lines and passages that particular inspired them. They include "Fire that’s closest kept, burnes most of all" from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and "When sorrowes comes, they come not as as single spies,/ But in Battaliaes [Battalions]" from Hamlet.

The historic volume was sold by the trustees of a library in Gordon Square, London, established in the early 18th century under the will of Dr Daniel Williams, the leading dissenting minister of his generation.

The Library, maintained by Dr Williams’s Trust, is one of the oldest open to the public still conducted on its original benefaction. It is regarded as the pre-eminent research library for English Protestant dissent.

The trustees had decided to sell it to secure the finances of the Library and safeguard its important historic collections of manuscripts and printed books for future generations.

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