Folger Shakespeare Library
The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period in Britain and Europe. The library was established by Henry Clay Folger in association with his wife, Emily Jordan Folger. It opened in 1932, two years after his death.
The library offers advanced scholarly programs and national outreach to K–12 classroom teachers on Shakespeare education. Other performances and events at the Folger include the award-winning Folger Theatre, which produces Shakespeare-inspired theater; Folger Consort, the early-music ensemble-in-residence; the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series; the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Reading Series; and numerous other exhibits, seminars, talks and lectures, and family programs. It also has several publications, including the Folger Library editions of Shakespeare's plays, the journal Shakespeare Quarterly, the teacher resource books Shakespeare Set Free, and catalogs of exhibitions. The Folger is also a leader in methods of preserving rare materials.
The library is privately endowed and administered by the Trustees of Amherst College. The library building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
History
executive Henry Clay Folger, a graduate of Amherst College and Columbia University, was an avid collector of Shakespeareana, beginning in 1889 with the purchase of a 1685 Fourth Folio. Toward the end of World War I, he and his wife Emily Jordan Folger began searching for a location for a Shakespeare library based on their collection. They chose a location adjacent to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The land was then occupied by townhouses, and Folger spent several years buying the separate lots. The site was designated for expansion by the Library of Congress, but in 1928, Congress passed a resolution allowing its use for Folger's project.The cornerstone of the library was laid in May 1930, but Folger died soon afterward. The bulk of Folger's fortune was left in trust, with Amherst College as administrator, for the library. Early members of the board included Amherst graduate and former president Calvin Coolidge, second chairman of the board of trustees. Because of the stock market crash of 1929, Folger's estate was smaller than he had planned, although still substantial. Emily Folger, who had worked with her husband on his collection, supplied the funds to complete the project. The library opened on April 23, 1932, the anniversary of what is believed to be Shakespeare's date of birth. Emily Folger remained involved in its administration until shortly before her death in 1936. In 2005, the Folger Board of Governors undertook administration of the Folger under the auspices of the Amherst Board of Trustees, though the Amherst board continues to manage the Folger's budget.
The Folger's first official reader was B. Roland Lewis, who later published The Shakespeare Documents: Facsimiles, Transliterations, Translations, and Commentary based on his research. The first fellowships were distributed in 1936. Early Folger exhibitions featured enticing items in the collection, including Ralph Waldo Emerson's copy of Shakespeare's works, an Elizabethan lute, and Edwin Booth's Richard III costume. Current practices for Folger exhibitions did not begin until 1964, when the first exhibition curated on site opened. During the Second World War, 30,000 items from the Folger collection were transported under guard to Amherst College's Converse Library, where they were stored for the duration of the war in case of an enemy attack on Washington, D.C.
Many of the Folger's current public events and programs began in the 1970s under the leadership of director O.B. Hardison. Under his direction, the Folger's theater was brought up to Washington, D.C. fire code, permitting performances by the Folger Theatre Group, the library's first professional company. The Folger Poetry Series also began in 1970. Hardison formed the Folger Institute, which coordinates academic programs and research at the Library. Folger Consort, the Library's early music ensemble, began performances in 1977.
The first Director of the Library, from 1940 to 1946, was Joseph Quincy Adams Jr.
Buildings and grounds
The main Folger building was designed by architect Paul Philippe Cret. The white marble exterior includes nine carved reliefs of scenes from Shakespeare's plays created by the sculptor John Gregory, an aluminum cast of a statue of Puck by Brenda Putnam, as well as many inscriptions personally selected by Henry Folger. The large Art Deco window and door grilles are aluminum.Inside, the building is designed in a Tudor style with oak paneling and plaster ceilings. The Elizabethan Theatre lobby contains the original marble Puck statue, and architectural painting by muralist Austin M. Purves Jr. The two reading rooms are reserved for use by scholars who have obtained advance permission. Public spaces include the large exhibition gallery, a gift shop, and an Elizabethan theatre.
Architecture
Henry Folger's search for an architect began with an acquaintance, Alexander B. Trowbridge, who had redesigned a home in Glen Cove, Long Island, in the old English style the Folgers were eager to feature in their Library. Folger contracted Trowbridge in 1928, but Trowbridge preferred to consult, rather than be the primary architect, and so recommended French émigré Paul Phillippe Cret. Trowbridge and Cret shared a similar vision for the design of the Library—a neoclassical building that stripped the facade of any decorative elements. Though the Folgers had initially desired an entirely Elizabethan building, they ultimately agreed that a neoclassical building would blend with other existing buildings on Capitol Hill. To retain an Elizabethan quality on the exterior of the building, Cret and Trowbridge proposed to decorate the facade with scenes from Shakespeare's works. Currently, moving from left to right, the nine relief sculptures on the front facade depict iconic scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Richard III, Hamlet, and Henry IV, Part 1.In 1959, the Folger contracted Harbeson, Hough, Livingston, and Larson, a Philadelphia firm that succeeded Cret's, to design a new wing by building over a rear parking lot. The additions also yielded a roof garden on top of the new wing. A second Folger building, the Haskell Center, opened in 2000 across Third Street from the original building. The nineteenth-century office building was adapted by architect Andrew K. Stevenson to house the library's education and public programs staffs.
The Folger currently maintains a row of townhouses on Third Street to provide housing for scholars, readers, fellows, participants in Folger Institute programs, and other visitors.
Reading Room
The Reading Room officially opened in January 1933 and today contains reference works for easy accessibility to readers. From 1977 to 1983, the Folger Shakespeare Library was renovated. Design was provided by Hartman-Cox Architects. During this renovation, it included the addition of new book stacks, renovation of office spaces, and an expansion to the Reading Room. A second, more modern reading room dedicated as the Theodora Sedgwick Bond-William Ross Bond Memorial Reading Room was completed in 1982. Upon Gail Kern Paster's retirement as director of the Folger in 2011, the original reading room was renamed the Gail Kern Paster Reading Room.Henry Folger wanted the Library's reading room to feel at once like a private home and the Great Hall of an English college. It features stained-glass windows and a large stone fireplace which has never been used. The large stained-glass window overlooking what is now the Gail Kern Paster Reading Room was designed and created by Nicola D'Ascenzo, who depicted the familiar "Seven Ages of Man" soliloquy from As You Like It.
Elizabethan Theatre
Initially, the Elizabethan Theatre was not intended for theatrical performance. The original model was the Fortune Playhouse, and then the Globe Theatre; these models proved difficult to replicate exactly, and the Folgers ultimately decided to incorporate features from multiple theaters to give visitors a general picture of a theater during the Elizabethan era. Before Folger Theatre productions began, the Elizabethan Theatre was used for concert performances and academic lectures. The theater, which seats around 260, has no pit. Painted on the ceiling is a well-known quote from As You Like It: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."The first theatrical performance in the Elizabethan Theatre was a 1949 production of Julius Caesar by the Amherst Masquers. The Folger Theatre Group formed in 1970 when the Elizabethan Theatre became compliant with Washington, D.C. fire safety laws. Early productions included Dionysus Wants You!, which adapted The Bacchae into a rock musical, and Twelfth Night.
Elizabethan Garden
At the east end of the building is an Elizabethan Garden featuring plants from Shakespeare's plays, opened in 1989 amid the four magnolias planted by Emily Jordan Folger in 1932. In 2003, several sculptures by Greg Wyatt based on Shakespeare's plays joined the Elizabethan plants in the garden.West garden
Sculptor Brenda Putnam was hired in May 1930 to design a sculpture of Puck for a garden on the west side of the building. Decades of exposure weakened the statue, and after Puck's right hand was found across the street at the Library of Congress in 2000, the original piece was moved. It now sits near the gift shop on the west side of the building.The west garden's lawn shrank during the 1959 additions to the library, when part of its space was paved for a new staff parking area.