“Shakespeare’s high cultural status in the age of empire really transformed the First Folio into an iconic object.”

“The first thing I did, oddly enough, was sniff it.”

“This astonishing book is evidence of the love and respect that Shakespeare elicited from his friends and colleagues.”

First Folios missing, stolen, recovered and discovered.

“There is throughout the sense of a draft, and the wonderfully scrappy, open-to-chance nature of Elizabethan playwriting.”