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| Great Hall, Folger Shakespeare Library |
There are 232 surviving First Folios of the works of William Shakespeare, and the world's largest collection of them—82—is not in London, Oxford or anywhere else in England. The volumes are deep in the bowels of the Folger Shakespeare Library, a building tucked in among the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress.
"Without these Folios, published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, 18 of his plays—including 'Macbeth,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'The Tempest' and 'As You Like It'—would have been lost," says Michael Witmore, the Folger's director since July, as we tour the underground stacks. "They originally sold for one British pound, worth around $200 present value," he adds. But the price has gone up in the nearly 400 years since. "In 2001," he says, "a single First Folio sold at Christie's for $6.2 million." I gingerly return the Folio I've been holding to its shelf.
