https://www.npr.org/2024/06/19/nx-s1-4950096/folger-shakespeare-library-renovation

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You can now see 82 copies of Shakespeare's First Folio on display in
one place The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is
emerging from a four-year metamorphosis. Eighty-two copies of
Shakespeare's "First Folio" will be together on public display for
the first time.
 

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Much Ado About First Folios -- the world's largest Shakespeare
collection reopens

June 19, 202412:00 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Bob Mondello 2010

Bob Mondello

Much Ado About First Folios -- the world's largest Shakespeare
collection reopens

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The new main exhibition hall at the Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2024.

The new main exhibition hall at the Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2024. Jared Soares for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Jared Soares for NPR

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. -- home to the
world's largest Shakespeare collection -- is emerging from a four-year
metamorphosis that has left it almost entirely transformed -- new
museum spaces, new leadership announced, new programming outreach.

After years of being available only to scholars, the jewels of the
library's collection -- 82 copies of Shakespeare's "First Folio,"
printed 400 years ago -- will now be together on public display for
the first time.

We got a behind-the-scenes sneak peek to look at how the Folger is
reaching out to new audiences.

Shakespeare and the classics in Chocolate City

So much has changed at the Folger Shakespeare Library since it closed
for renovations in January 2020, that it makes sense that the show
reopening its performance space is called Metamorphoses. Mary
Zimmerman's adaptation of Ovid's epic Roman poem is all about change,
and Karen Ann Daniels, who directs programming for the Folger and is
artistic director of its theater, sensed that it could speak to
underserved audiences in D.C. if the Folger Theatre did it right.

"The play could really lean into the larger history of the
populations of D.C.," she said. "I'm totally thinking Chocolate City.
That's really where my idea came from."

Her idea was to do the play with an all-Black cast, a notion director
Psalmayene 24 wasn't sure he was on board with until Memphis police
officers fatally injured Tyre Nichols, a Black FedEx employee, last
year during a traffic stop. The director said he worked through his
grief at the incident by incorporating elements of the Black diaspora
into Metamorphoses to celebrate Black humanity.

Artistic Director of the Folger Theatre Karen Ann Daniels at the
Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2024.

"The play could really lean into the larger history of the
populations of DC," said Folger Theatre Artistic Director Karen Ann
Daniels, shown here in the Folger's performance space on June 14,
2024. Jared Soares for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Jared Soares for NPR

"So in some ways this play is a response to America's own proclivity
for lethal anti-Blackness," he said. "And when you do a show like
this at a place like Folger, it says something about how not only
Folger Theatre is changing, but how American culture is changing, how
D.C. is changing, and how universal the stories that pass through
this theater actually are. These stories are for everyone, and can be
told in many different ways."

The librarian has a favorite First Folio. It's not the fanciest one.

A huge display case in the middle of the library's new exhibition
space glows softly, quietly announcing that it contains the Library's
crown jewel: 82 copies of Shakespeare's First Folio printed in 1623 --
more than a third of all the copies that are known to exist.

The First Folio marked the first time, just a few years after
Shakespeare's death, that his works were collected into a single
volume, which makes it a benchmark for scholars. But no two of the
copies collected by Henry and Emily Folger in their lifetime look the
same. Some are skinny, others massive.

The main exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library

One of the Folger Shakespeare Library's 82 copies of the First Folio,
the Bard's complete works printed in 1623, just a few years after his
death. Jared Soares for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Jared Soares for NPR

"These were all printed in 1623," confirmed Folger librarian and
director of collections Greg Prickman, "in the printshop of William
Jaggard and his son Isaac, but over the intervening 400 years a whole
lot has happened to these books. Sometimes they get damaged and parts
are removed. Sometimes parts are added from other copies."

Asked if he has a favorite, he headed to the far right side of the
display case, past Folios prettily bound in leather with gold
tooling.

"The one that I like the most is #30 -- the only copy in this
collection that has the original binding that was put on when this
book was first purchased, not long after it was printed.

"So, if you wanted to see, 'What does Shakespeare's First Folio look
like when it was just another quote-unquote new book?' that's the
copy that you're gonna be looking at, is #30."

A sampler of Shakespearean insults

To the right of the main display case, there's a smaller interactive
display that lets you create a Shakespearean conversation. We only
spent a few moments with it, but the display makes its own selections
from phrases in the Bard's plays once you choose a category -- perhaps
"blessing" ("You have been nobly born") or "burning" ("Do as thou
wilt, for I have done with thee").

We only played with it for a few minutes, but we note that the plays
contain a full complement of Shakespearean insults, so in theory, it
could have you spouting such Elizabethan invective as:

"Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant." (Taming of the Shrew,
Act 4, scene 3)

"I am sick when I do look on thee." (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act
2, scene 1)

"I must tell you friendly in your ear, Sell when you can; you are not
for all markets." (As You Like It, Act 3, scene 5)

"More of your conversation would infect my brain." (Coriolanus, Act
2, scene 1)

"The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended
nostril." (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 3, scene 5)

"And thou unfit for any place but hell." (Richard III, Act 1 scene 2)

"Villain, I have done thy mother." (Titus Andronicus, Act 4, scene 2)

"Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!" (Timon of Athens, Act 4,
scene 3)

The Mulberry Conundrum

The exhibition space has lots of rare manuscripts in a room called
"Out of the Vault," which of course made us wonder what else is in
"the vault," which is not open to the public. So we asked, and were
led down a staircase to an imposing, steel, bank-vault door, behind
which lie the refrigerated ("because that makes the books happy")
library stacks containing the quarter of a million other volumes in
the Folger's collection.

There are also 100,000 objects down here, ranging from paintings of
the Bard, to props, costumes, models and "pieces of the tree," said
Prickman, enigmatically.

Folger Shakespeare Library Director of Programming and Exhibitions
Greg Prickman outside the main exhibition hall.

Librarian Greg Prickman is the Folger's Director of Collections and
Exhibitions. Jared Soares/Jared Soares for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Jared Soares/Jared Soares for NPR

"The mulberry tree," he continued when pressed. "'Objects associated
with Shakespearean legends' is probably the best way to put it. I'm
not the one to tell this story."

So we looked it up.

Shakespeare allegedly planted a mulberry tree at his home in
Stratford. More than a century later in the 1750s, the home's
then-owner, Rev. Francis Gastrell, got so tired of people asking to
see it that he chopped it down, and local entrepreneur Thomas Sharpe
bought the wood and had it crafted into Shakespearean souvenirs --
everything from a carved casket that was presented to actor David
Garrick (1717-1779), to snuff boxes and medallions.

So many items were created that they pretty clearly didn't all come
from one tree, but the Folger has some.

Why the Folgers placed a bet on the Humanities

The impulse to reach a more universal audience is what led Folger
Library director Michael Witmore to spearhead the library's $80.5M
rethink -- a wholesale "metamorphosis," if you will, of a building and
a mission that had been, frankly, functioning quite well.

"For the first part of the Folger's existence, it was primarily a
research library," said Witmore, "serving scholars who were studying
everything from animal husbandry to lyric poetry to theater. But we
have the facilities and collection to do more, and this renovation
allows us to take a world-class research library and surround it with
a cultural institution that is a destination."

A destination in the service of words written more than 400 years
ago. Words that are also available digitally -- "we digitize in order
to create access, said Prickman, "and we exhibit materials in order
to create access. The originals remain."

And the presence of those originals just down the block from the
Library of Congress, U.S. Capitol, and Supreme Court, was a big part
of the intention of Henry and Emily Folger, said Witmore.

A view of the new underground entrance to the Folger Shakespeare
Library's exhibition areas.

A view of the new underground entrance to the Folger Shakespeare
Library's exhibition areas. Jared Soares for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Jared Soares for NPR

"We need these words and these stories to elevate our sense of what's
possible as citizens. When you think about what happens in the
Capitol, which is where words -- you may not agree with them, you may
think they're funny or shallow -- but it's where words really matter.
Including when the court is looking at what those words mean.

"So to put a Shakespeare library where his works are being performed,
and where people are working through the poems and other things,
right in this spot I think is a big bet on the importance of the
humanities and the arts in a functioning democracy."

Story edited and field produced by Jennifer Vanasco. Broadcast story
produced by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.

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