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

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.

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. 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. 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.

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