Welcome to the Folger
Enjoy great stories | Explore what makes you curious | Share the best in art, history, and literature with friends and family at the world’s largest Shakespeare collection.
The Folger is open! New exhibition galleries, gardens, and shop
Plan your visit
Get details and reserve timed-entry passes.
Explore our exhibitions
See what’s on view in our galleries.
Check out our shop
Gifts, games, merch, and more!
Eat at Quill & Crumb
Enjoy lunch or a quick snack at our new café.
What’s on
Join us for in-person and virtual events: theater, poetry, music, and more.
Folger Salon with Alex Baines, Rob Clines, and Anandi Rao
How to Be a Power Player: Tudor Edition
Folger Friday: Black Arts Fest
Our Shakespeare Exhibition
Disability Poetics with Camisha Jones and torrin a. greathouse
Get Your Students into the Folger Collection!
Cocktails and Conversation with Luis Carazo
Mixology: Game Night
Not Just Another Day Off
About us
How did the world’s largest Shakespeare collection end up one block from the US Capitol? Explore the Folger’s origin story.
The latest from our blogs and podcast
Humans and monsters
In Humans: A Monstrous History, Surekha Davies shows how our multi-millennial relationship with monsters has shaped the origins of the modern world and ideas about humanness and otherness.
The Curious Papers of the Curious Dr. Stukeley
A look at items in the Folger collection belonging to William Stukeley, an antiquarian with an interest in Robin Hood
What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters in February
See what’s playing at our Shakespeare Theater Partners around the country this February.
Seeking and Finding: Using the Collection in an Undergraduate Writing Class
GWU students reflect on their experience using the Folger collections in Dr. Rachel Pollack’s first-year writing course.
Quiz: Shakespeare, love, and lovers
What did Shakespeare’s characters have to say about love and lovers? Try our quiz to complete their lines.
Shakespeare’s narrative poems
How did early modern England perceive race? Patricia Akhimie, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, and contributing writers Dennis Britton and Kirsten Mendoza examine race, gender, and power in Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
Our collection
The First Folio
The Folger has the world’s largest collection of First Folios. Learn more about the book that gave us Shakespeare.
A majestic portrait
The Folger collection includes about 200 paintings. This portrait of Queen Elizabeth I by George Gower is dated 1579, making it the oldest painting in our collection. Two years after he completed this portrait, Gower became Serjeant Painter to the Queen, making him the most important artist in England.
Our other Elizabeth I holdings include hand-signed letters, books, and even New Year’s gift rolls detailing her holiday gifts. It is the largest collection of Elizabeth I materials in North America.
Shakespeare’s works
View the full list of plays and poems to read, search, and download our bestselling editions of Shakespeare’s works.
Shakespeare’s most popular plays
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Julius Caesar
Othello
Hamlet
Explore
What was Shakespeare's theater like?
Learn about the Globe and other London playhouses where Shakespeare’s company performed. What was it like to be an actor there, or an audience member?
Teach
How can Shakespeare help 21st-century students be stronger readers?
Our Folger Method is revolutionizing how not just Shakespeare but all literature is taught using strategies that allow all students to own – and enjoy – complex texts.
Research
If we are what we eat, what can recipes from the past tell us?
Projects like Before ‘Farm to Table’ unite scholars and practitioners in investigations into the past to shed light on what matters to us today.
Support the things you love
Your gifts make access to our collection, learning opportunities, and exciting experiences happen.