And Now, Shakespeare

Emory has been designated the Georgia site for display of First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, a national traveling exhibition of the Shakespeare First Folio, one of the world’s most treasured books.

The Folger Shakespeare Library, in partnership with Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association, is touring a First Folio of Shakespeare in 2016 to all fifty states; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico. The First Folio comes to Emory through a combined effort of the university; the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL); the World Shakespeare Project; and the Michael C. Carlos Museum, where the exhibit will be on display. Planning is under way for numerous programs for the public around the First Folio exhibition, expected to arrive this fall.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity for Emory, MARBL, the Woodruff Library, and the Carlos Museum to focus on the strengths of our shared literary and cultural collections,” says Rosemary Magee 82PhD, director of MARBL. “Students, scholars, teachers, and the broader community throughout Georgia will come face-to-face with works of great achievement that continue to transform our sense of ourselves.”

The First Folio is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays. It was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. “The First Folio is the book that gave us Shakespeare. Between its covers we discover his most famous characters—Hamlet, Desdemona, Cordelia, Macbeth, Romeo, Juliet, and hundreds of others—speaking words that continue to move and inspire us,” says Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library. “Shakespeare tells the human story like no one else. He connects us to each other, to our history, and to themes and ideas that touch us every day.”