Shakespeare's First Folio Goes Out On Tour

by Susan Stamberg
National Public Radio

Title page of William Shakespeare's  First 

Folio, c. 1623. Wikipedia

One of the world's most precious volumes starts a tour on Monday, in Norman, Okla. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is sending out William Shakespeare's First Folio to all 50 states, to mark the 400th anniversary of the bard's death. Published seven years after he died, the First Folio is the first printed collection of all of Shakespeare's plays.

The Folger has 82 First Folios — the largest collection in the world. It's located several stairways down, in a rare manuscript vault. To reach them, you first have to get through a fire door ... (if a fire did threaten these priceless objects, it would be extinguished not with water — never water near priceless paper — but with a system that removes oxygen from the room).

A massive safe door comes next — so heavy it takes two burly guards to open it, and then yet another door, which triggers a bell to alert librarians that someone has entered. After that, there's yet another door and an elevator waaaay down to a vault that nearly spans the length of a city block, says Folger director Michael Witmore.

This is where the library stores tens of thousands of pieces of paper — folios, plus half of everything printed in England from 1473 to 1660 and much more. And there, propped open on spongy wedges to protect the binding, is the First Folio.

"If you had to pick one book to represent Shakespeare, this is it," Witmore says.

Two of Shakespeare's pals put it together in 1623, after he died. John Heminges and Henry Condell were fellow actors, who felt the plays should be collected in a single large volume.

They also added in 18 of Shakespeare's plays that had never appeared in print, explains Witmore. "Without this book we probably wouldn't have ... Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Winter's Tale ..."