First Folio! The book that gave us Shakespeare
On tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library
Why should this book matter so much? If John Heminge and Henry Condell hadn’t collected the best copies they could find of the plays their fellow-actor William Shakespeare wrote, we wouldn’t have half of those plays—the half that hadn’t been printed during his lifetime.
We wouldn’t remember Miranda, the epitome of innocence, saying “O brave new world, that hath such creatures in it,” in The Tempest. We wouldn’t hear Macbeth, made cynical by his many murders, intoning “Life’s but a walking shadow/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more.” And so on, for sixteen other plays in the priceless legacy left us by William Shakespeare.
First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library, is a national traveling exhibition organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, to commemorate the 400th anniversary in 2016 of Shakespeare’s death. It is produced in association with the American Library Association and Cincinnati Museum Center. First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring human endeavor, and by the support of Google.org, Vinton and Sigrid Cerf, the British Council, and other generous donors.
The exhibit is free and open to the public.
When: April 11-May 1, 2016. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday 12-5p, Thursday 12-8p. Private tours for students and teachers on request. Contact coppelia_kahn@brown.edu.
Where: Cohen Gallery, Granoff Center for the Arts, Angell and Thayer Streets, behind Brown University Bookstore. map »
Parking: On street, and in any Brown University parking lot after 5 pm.

“Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe : And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.”