The Folger Shakespeare Library

A book nerd's dream - to be amongst the words of Shakespeare. Tom Post, Managing Editor of Forbes, visits the vaults of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the world's largest repository of Shakespeare's works.

From the piece...

It’s nobody’s favorite Shakespeare play. When the curtain finally drops on five acts of murder, rape, mutilation and revenge in Titus Andronicus, probably the first of his tragedies, you may feel mathematically satisfied (that’s the nature of retribution), but hardly moved.

But seeing a 1594 quarto of the play—one of the earliest printed works of Shakespeare—you can’t help but feel blown away.

Absent the miraculous discovery of a manuscript in Shakespeare’s hand, this is about as close as anybody will ever get to the young playwright. (Quartos are small, individual editions of his works; Shakespeare’s name didn’t start to appear on title pages until 1598.) The unique copy of Titus was unearthed in 1904, found in the trunk of a Swedish postal clerk, bound in a couple of 18th century lottery tickets. It didn’t stay on the market long: Henry Clay Folger (1857-1930), the Standard Oil Co. executive, pounced, paying the unholy sum of £2,000 (roughly $215,000 in today’s dollars). Folger collected rare editions of Shakespeare the way Lindsay Lohan piles up DWI violations. But he also left his fabulous accumulation, now roughly 26,000 volumes, to the American public. Today, it resides behind a thick steel door, down in the bowels of the Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington, D.C. A few go on display.