Last week, I had the fantastic opportunity to tour the vaults of the Folger Shakespeare Library. (Warning: If you’d rather not witness full-on English-major geek-outery, you may want to stop reading here.)
First, the vaults are truly vaults: giant be-wheeled doors straight out of bank-heist movies, small elevator going deep below the library itself, climate-controlled everything, custom storage as far as the eye can see. The highlight for me? Seeing a First Folio. The Folger has a whopping 79 First Folios out of a probable 228 in existence (they have a going rate of around $6 million each, though they’re priceless in their impact on the English language alone). The one I saw up close is unique: the margins are decorated with doodles from one of its previous owners, a little girl circa 1729. She actually drew (with a quill?) houses and furniture and stick figures with, I do believe, corsets. Can’t you just see her mother walking in and saying, “Stop drawing on the First Folio!”
Other great things: a deed to Shakespeare’s house, a letter from Queen Elizabeth I to James VI of Scotland displaying her truly awful handwriting, a proclamation from the Queen demanding that people dress more modestly (those ruffs were getting out of control!), intricately drawn “prompt books” that went far beyond telling actors where to stand, and two books on hunting that feature the same royal illustration–just one has King James pasted in where Queen Elizabeth used to be (seventeenth-century Photoshop at its finest). I also have to mention the family I met in the vaults who were getting their own private tour, and whose teenage son said he’d read my Facebook Hamlet in his AP English class. That’s no First Folio with Doodles, but it’s still very cool.
Thanks so much to the people at the Folger. Much of the library’s collection can be viewed on its site.
