Making a case for Shakespeare, 400 years after his death

What is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection doing in Washington, DC? Across the street from the Library of Congress, diagonally opposite the Supreme Court, sits the Folger Shakespeare Library. At first glance, the large neoclassical block of white marble looks like another government building. Approach the entrance, however, and you will be greeted by a statue of Puck, the mischief-making sprite from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. At his feet, a quotation reads: “Lord, what fooles these mortals be!”

The library was established by Henry and Emily Folger, Gilded Age philanthropists who spent their oil fortune obsessively collecting First Folios and rare Shakespeare materials. After years of hoarding the collection in bank vaults, they decided to create a monument to Shakespeare in America’s capital. “The poet is one of our best sources, one of the wells from which we Americans draw our national thought, our faith and our hope,” Emily said. The Founding Fathers similarly adored Shakespeare, seeing in his tyrants the need for institutional checks on power.

The Folger Shakespeare Library opened in 1932 and ever since has catered to a rarefied community of scholars and theatre patrons. In 2020 it closed for a renovation to the tune of $80.5m, aimed at making the library more welcoming. “We’re trying to take down barriers,” says Greg Prickman, the director of collections and exhibitions. “Our mission is to make the collection accessible.”

Most of the Folger’s holdings—which include some 277,000 books and 60,000 manuscripts—had been housed in a vast underground storage facility. To share more of its treasured hoard with the public, the library has created new galleries, adding 12,000 feet of public space underneath the Great Hall and theatre.

The extension comes at a time when Shakespeare’s exalted place in the public imagination is increasingly under threat, at least in America. To those on the political right, he is obscene; schools in Florida have abridged the plays because of their “raunchiness”. Some on the left see him as colonialist, racist and misogynistic. Teachers have questioned whether he is still relevant to students and suggested setting the plays aside in favour of works by non-white or female authors. Few leading American universities still require literature students to take a module on Shakespeare.

The Folger wants to make the case that Shakespeare belongs to everyone, even if he seems pale, male and stale. Washington’s population is 44% black. Beyond the political sphere is a neighbourhood with “all kinds of folks who haven’t been aware of the Folger because the Folger has behaved like it wasn’t aware of them,” says Peggy O’Brien, its director of education.

So a new exhibition addresses the subject of race head-on. It includes a portrait of Ira Aldridge, who in 1825 became the first black actor to play Othello (the role had hitherto been assumed by white actors in blackface). “For too long, Shakespeare was seen as both the property of white culture and evidence of its supremacy,” a display notes. The Folger itself is implicated in this thorny history. In 1932 Joseph Quincy Adams, who became the library’s first director, praised Shakespeare as the “cornerstone” of Anglo-Saxon culture, key to forging a homogenous American nation when “The forces of immigration became a menace to the preservation of our long-established English civilisation.”

Elsewhere the challenge is making the old artefacts look exciting. In the centre of the hall, the First Folios—the Folger’s crown jewels—glow dimly in a glass vitrine. Around 750 copies of Shakespeare’s collected plays were originally printed in 1623. Only 235 survive today; the Folger owns more than a third. Visitors are now able to see all 82 copies for the first time. “They were stored in the furthest corner of the deepest vault and now they’re inside the front door,” says Ms O’Brien.

To help visitors explore the collection, the Folger has turned to technology. An interactive light show highlights the Folios’ unique qualities. Which was the most expensive? A copy acquired by Henry Folger in 1903 for $48,732 ($1.7m today). How many of them were owned by women? A third. Visitors can explore the Folios via touchscreen. What is the rust stain on one Folio? An outline of spectacles from a reader who left their glasses on the book.

Another exhibition hall will rotate rare books and manuscripts, from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” to Mark Twain’s “Is Shakespeare Dead?”. In the short book, Twain expounded his view that someone else wrote the works. “So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life,” wrote Twain. “All the rest of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures—an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high.”

Ironically Henry Folger seems to have harboured similar doubts; so did several Supreme Court justices who visited the Folger’s collection. “I think the evidence that he was not the author is beyond a reasonable doubt,” said John Paul Stevens, who suspected that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the true author. “People have a lot of different opinions about Shakespeare,” says Ms O’Brien. “That’s to be acknowledged and invited. It’s a dialogue.” In its expansion, the Folger has even made room for heretical views. ■