A Poet’s Legacy Is Stored in Folger Shakespeare Library

If William Shakespeare were to come back to life and resurface here, he would feel very much at home in the neoclassic white marble building across from the Library of Congress.

Shakespeare would be 426 years old.

Nine large bas-reliefs by sculptor John Gregory depict scenes from Shakespeare’s plays on the exterior of the imposing structure. In a nearby garden, carved on the base of Brenda Putnam’s statue of Puck, is the line from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “Lord, what fooles these mortals be!”

Inside the building, the Folger Shakespeare Library, is the world’s largest collection of plays and poetry by William Shakespeare, as well as America’s pre-eminent collection of English-language publications from the 15th through 18th centuries. Holdings include two-thirds of all known titles published in England or in English before 1640.

In addition, the library houses a virtual history of Shakespeare productions during the past four centuries, thanks to its vast collection of playbills, promptbooks, paintings, costumes, correspondence, critical reviews, manuscripts, books and films.

Scholars throughout the world come here to do serious research on Shakespeare, his poetry, his plays, his times, the origins and influence of the Elizabethan Age, the Renaissance in general, and the literature, economics and politics of 15th-through-18th-Century Europe.

Researchers pore over rare books and manuscripts dating from the 15th Century in the stunning Elizabethan Reading Room. Visitors with no connection to academia come to see the treasures on exhibit in the 130-foot-long Great Hall, with its oak-paneled walls and hand-carved Elizabethan doorways, a re-creation of a Tudor gallery.

There are midday poetry readings. The Folger Consort, an Elizabethan music ensemble, performs frequently. There are seminars, symposiums and lectures year-round.

Here, too, is a reproduction of a theater typical of Shakespeare’s day, modeled after an inn with balconies. Artistic director Michael Kahn’s 1990-91 season opens Sept. 11 in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre with “Richard III,” starring Stacy Keach in the title role of the “murderous charmer who schemes and seduces his way to the English throne.”

The best flavor of the Elizabethan Age to be found anywhere in America is at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

It was a lecture on Shakespeare by Ralph Waldo Emerson at Amherst College in 1879 that triggered Henry Clay Folger’s interest in the playwright.

Folger was a descendant of Peter Folger, a Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., schoolmaster who emigrated from England in 1635. Peter Folger’s daughter, Abiah, was Benjamin Franklin’s mother.

After he graduated from Amherst (the same year he heard Emerson’s lecture), Folger was hired as a clerk by Standard Oil Company of New York, where he rose through the ranks to become president. His wife, Emily Jordan, wrote a master’s thesis at Vassar based on her study of various editions of Shakespeare’s plays published from the 16th to 19th centuries.

Both were hooked on the Bard for 60 years and devoted all of their spare time to collecting related material. That devotion culminated in their decision to build the library.

Folger died two weeks after the cornerstone was laid. President Herbert Hoover dedicated the library on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, in 1932. Folger’s wife was involved in its financial support and operation until her death in 1936.

The Folgers had no children. Their fortune was spent on the Shakespeare collection, the library and the endowment to operate it. The Folgers left the library in care of the trustees of Amherst College. Their ashes are in the Elizabethan Reading Room.

“There are things here that scholars come from England to see because they cannot be found in Shakespeare’s homeland,” said Ann Greer, library public affairs coordinator, as she opened the 1568 personal Bible of Queen Elizabeth I, a volume bound in its original red velvet.

She turned the pages of a 1502 Latin book that belonged to Henry VIII. As a student, he scrawled in large, bold hand: “Thys boke is myne. Prince Henry.” Greer also showed a letter written by Queen Elizabeth to Henry IV of France in 1595.

Among the library’s remarkable treasures are 79 copies of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published in London in 1623 by two of his fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, seven years after the playwright’s death. The British Library has the next largest collection of the First Folio--five copies. There were 1,000 printed; 240 are known to exist.

The title page of the First Folio reads: “Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies” and contains the best-known portrait of the author, one of only two authentic likenesses known to exist.

“What a privilege to be allowed in these hallowed rooms, to be able to have access to the rare books and manuscripts and to use them for research,” said Bernice Kliman, 56, who teaches Shakespeare at Nassau Community College on Long Island. She has spent a month every summer since 1976 in the library working on her own books.

Her book “Hamlet--Film, TV and Audio Performances” was researched here. She is now doing a history of 18th-Century Shakespearean actors. “I thumb through pages of books written in the 1700s full of descriptions of actors, their acting traits, face, eyes, voice, expressions, detailed accounts of their performances,” she explained.

At another table sat Peter Blayney, 46, of London, a scholar-in-residence who has been working for six years on a book about the book trade in London from 1590 to 1610. “I’m here every day. My work is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This project is likely to take me 20 years,” Blayney said.

“No one has ever covered this before. I’m reviewing 8,500 books published in London during those two decades. Yes, I’m obsessed with the subject. You have to be slightly unhinged to get involved in something of this magnitude,” he said.

Two other scholars met here seven years ago while doing research and decided to collaborate on a book about Shakespeare’s Caliban, a character in his plays who is the symbol of the exploited native. They have since married--Alden Vaughn, a professor of history at Columbia, and his wife, Virginia, a professor of English at Clark University. The book is to be published next year.

This summer--from July 23 through Aug. 20--for the first time, 25 American and 15 British secondary-school Shakespeare teachers will spend two weeks at Stratford-on-Avon and two weeks at the Folger to study with some of the best-known Shakespeare scholars, actors and directors in an program put on by the Folger and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

“This is the first collaboration between the two, considered the two most significant Shakespeare repositories in the world,” said Peggy O’Brien, 42, education coordinator for the Folger. The American teachers are being funded by a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She explained that each summer the Folger sponsors an institute for secondary-school teachers of Shakespeare who come to the library. “We generally have 30 to 40 teachers selected from 700 who apply. It is one of many educational programs sponsored by the Folger. There is also an annual Shakespeare Festival for Washington-area fourth- to 12th-graders.

“We send 14 trainees to 187 schools in 12 states to teach more than 19,000 students each year all about Shakespeare. We’re doing more with Shakespeare than anybody. We turn the lights on with kids. The best way to teach them Shakespeare is to have them get up on their feet and enact the roles in his plays.”

O’Brien said, “There is something about this guy that captures them, no matter who or where they are--in rural schools, inner-city or affluent schools. Shakespeare can really make a difference to many young students.”

Werner Gundersheimer, 53, an Italian Renaissance scholar and author of six books, has been director of the Folger since 1984. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst and his graduate work at Harvard. He previously taught at the universities of Wisconsin, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania and Tel Aviv, and at Swarthmore College.

The library has a staff of 75 and operates on an annual budget of $4.4 million, with $250,000 spent each year on acquisitions.

“When the library opened 58 years ago, it was universally recognized as the world’s pre-eminent repository of materials concerning Shakespeare. Today, it is also one of the world’s leading centers for research in the continental Renaissance and early modern European literature and history,” said Gundersheimer, who added:

“I’m sure William Shakespeare and Emily and Henry Clay Folger would be pleased and proud of this national treasure that carries their names, the Folger Shakespeare Library.”