Dates announced for Shakespeare’s First Folio exhibit


William Shakespeare’s First Folio is slated to arrive at FIU’s Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in February 2016.

As part of the national traveling exhibition First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays will be on display at 52 sites across the United States next year marking the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death. FIU has been selected as the only site in Florida to host a complete edition of the First Folio.

“We are delighted that we have been slated to receive the First Folio in February,” said James Sutton, chair of the Department of English in the College of Arts & Sciences. “We are planning to celebrate its visit to FIU with a robust series of events, including opening and closing celebrations, educational programming for local schoolchildren and families, films, an academic conference, music, and of course, performances of the plays.”

The effort to bring the First Folio to FIU was led by Sutton, along with Gayle Williams and Shawn Tonner from FIU Libraries, and Klaudio Rodriguez from the Frost Art Museum.

The 500-square-foot traveling exhibit, which includes digital content and interactive activities, tells a two-part story. The first is about the book itself. The second is about Shakespeare’s plays and their significance.  When the folio arrives in Miami, its pages will be opened to the “to be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet — one of the most quoted selection of words ever written.

The First Folio was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, by his colleagues hoping to preserve them for future generations. The collection saved 18 plays that had not previously appeared in print, including Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night.

About the exhibit
The Folger Shakespeare Library, in collaboration with Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association, is touring Shakespeare’s First Folio to all 50 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare has been made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor, and by the support of Google.org and Vinton and Sigrid Cerf. Sponsorship opportunities of this major exhibition and the Folger’s other Wonder of Will programs commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death are available; learn more at www.folger.edu.

Title page of the First Folio. Photo courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Title page with Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare. Credit: Shakespeare First Folio, 1623. Folger Shakespeare Library.