‘Fame, Fortune, & Theft: The Shakespeare First Folio’ is the theme of the current exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Prized by scholars, collectors, and others for centuries, many of the 232 surviving  First Folio editions of Shakespeare’s works have their own intriguing life stories, and this exhibition brings together books, documents, and objects to tell some of the most interesting ones. One of my favourite exhibits was an Elizabethan-style casket commissioned in 1866 by Angela Burdett-Coutts, with compartments for her First Folio and 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems. The oak from which it was carved came from a tree in Windsor Park which fell in a storm and was given to Burdett-Coutts by Queen Victoria; this ancient tree is mentioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor and the casket features four tiny carved figures from the play.  There’s also a replica of the glass box containing the ashes of Edwin Forrest’s First Folio, effectively destroyed by a fire at his home in Philadelphia in 1873. As these two objects suggest, the exhibition conveys a strong sense of how much the First Folio has mattered to people as a material text, as something to be bought, collected, coveted, stolen and preserved, even in dust and ashes.

‘Fame, Fortune, & Theft’ is open until 3 September 2011, and much of it is available to view online here.