Searching for Shakespeare: Celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare’s First Folio

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 47 We likely wouldn’t have half of Shakespeare’s plays without the 1623 First Folio. Imagine a world without Macbeth, Twelfth Night, or Julius Caesar. Emma Smith offers an intimate, step-by-step story of how it was created.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 56  Today, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s works, printed in 1623, can sell for millions of dollars. But the First Folio wasn’t always valued so highly. In this podcast episode, two experts in the First Folio…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 17 In the fall of 2014, the world learned of a remarkable discovery: An old book in a French library, acquired in the 1790s, was identified as an unknown copy of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare—the…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 36 Henry Clay Folger paid a world record price for a book—not once, but twice—as he became the world’s leading collector of Shakespeare First Folios. The Folger Shakespeare Library celebrated its 90th birthday this past April. Did…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 31 Just what exactly does it mean to edit the works of Shakespeare, particularly since we have no surviving manuscript copies? Why is it that new editions of the plays continue to be published? In this episode…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 44 The Folger is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, and the crown jewels of that collection are the 82 First Folios. To celebrate 400 years of Shakespeare, eighteen of these rare books are traveling the country throughout…

Greg Prickman explains how news of the 1623 book we now call the  First Folio appeared a year earlier, on the occasion of a trade fair in Frankfurt, Germany.

Part 2 of the thrilling story about how Henry Folger acquired the Vincent-Sibthrop copy of the First Folio.

Did you ever wonder how Henry Folger acquired the copy of the First Folio that he considered “the most precious book in the world”? Wonder no more. Join Folger Archivist Sara Schliep on a two-part saga spanning over a decade and an ocean, both literal and figurative. Here is part 1 of the tale.

Emma Smith of Oxford University tells us what the First Folio has been up to since it was published 400 years ago.

Chris Laoutaris explores the Shakespearean printing mystery behind the Pavier-Jaggard Quartos, published a few years before the First Folio.

Chris Laoutaris talks with our podcast about Shakespeare’s Book: The Story Behind the First Folio and the Making of Shakespeare, which re-examines everything we thought we knew about the publication of the First Folio.