To talk about the two men in the context of their times. Of course they were two men both alike in dignity and yet separated by 400 years in the atlantic ocean. But they shared one thing, a passion for collect the good but to put them in the context of their lives if you lead, please. Sure, shakespeare was writing around the 1600s. His life was 20 years before, 20 years after the 1600. During the reign of elizabeth and james the first he was a wellknown playwright poet. He wrote sonnet and he was also a businessman. He was a shareholder in london and land owner very wellknown known is time for being a playwright and businessmen. Henry folger was the chairman of the board of the Largest Corporation in the world at the time as well during the gilded age. Shakespeare wrote these plays years after he died two of his friends decided to create a memorial volume and collected all of the 36 nodes 38 00 p. M. The two men are connect to across time and notion in the book is saved from obscurity became a fetish object for collect yours and henry folger wanted to own every known copy of the first folio. Host Something Interesting yearbook, i thought of the gilded age is a very sacred term referring to it that way. It was mark twain who coined the term and he was anything but complementary about those who lived in the gilded age. He was quite pejorative about it. In part the question is what the new wealth they did to display their wealth with magnificent mansions in new york with collections of art and books as well. If your cash around europe and then brought them back to the state. Henry folger was quite different than most of the gilded age characters we know of jpmorgan, Henry Huntington and the like. He was quiet unassuming, came from modest means worked his way up but most of all he never built himself a mansion. He never owned the house until he retired. He lives in a rented house in brooklyn and lived a very modest life and kept secret his obsessive passion. He could have built a bigger house if he didnt spend so much money on the manuscript. Undoubtedly that is true. He displayed them of his artwork and he collect books, manuscripts, musical scores and anything related to shakespeare. He started and when the house is full to the room he would take them into the basement, wrap them up and put them in a box and ship the box to a warehouse. I looked every states for storage fees for 30 years for some of the rooms he rented. One by one he would fill up warehouses rooms with his treasures, make an inventory and a note of which boxes in which room and over 30 years accumulated brewmaster room in brooklyn and manhattan. There is a tv show called quarters. There is a little element of that. If you are a person obsessed with contemporary needs papers or magazines and stack them to where you have to wind your way through they have order and personality they certainly acquire things and so we called them to you as well. You want to talk a little about James Swanson you are being kind to him. Part of it was informed by the fact they do that but they collect their and he has been collecting objects, manuscripts and books related to lincoln since he was 10 years old and hes amassed an enormous collection. Like henry james has had to put many of his objects into storage because there was no room for them. Hes got Storage Facilities in more than one state. James also is the author of a number of books but particularly one of my favorite is manhunt, the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after the lincoln assassination. Lets go back a little further than not. The first folio is the two men are the saviors the folio refers to the size of the book. Its very large. 13 by eight depending how its been shaped down. Life a life magazine size. That is correct. That book would be closer to some thing called half the size. What made it interesting was some kind of the work in that. Prior to and its been reserved for political and religious tracts. Not fiction, not literature and plays regarded as literature were regarded as amusements for the masses. Two of shakespeares friends how long before he passed away. The first is published in 1623. The idea percolated about five years that are shakespeares that, at which time only half of his place has been published. It would not have been known arguably had these two men not that both of these altogether and save them to your monies copies of the manuscripts talk about how that came about. It was somewhat interesting and bit reminiscent of some tragedies in contemporary america. Guest they have had a history of fire but more on that later. And they tried to attract patrons. It held 1500 people. One of the way as they added special effects. One might have a good idea of lets use a real can. Not computergenerated. They shot up the cannon upon the arrival of i think it was henry the eighth century to play and the cannon fodder that to end the car fire and burned to the ground in two hours. The great fire of london is several years later 1666. At that time the government had enough and that outlawed it until 1994 when the restoration was completed. [inaudible] guest yes, right right. Host one thing i found interesting is a required them to get permission for some of these which i used apart this once an author creates something unless its a work for hire. And upon their death to get the property for value. Shakespeare has licensed or sold host there was not copyright until 1709 daddy bought them out right. The company would have paid and then they would have had the right to perform or to publish. Guest if they were found to do that. Exclusively what they did is they held them closely. Someone who is in charge of those manuscripts because they feared other companies would get copies and take them to other cities and perform the plays and not pay them royalties. They figured weve got the rights to hamlet. We were really copied their laid off on others host i know from the movie shakespeare in love which has some historical actors, a huge amount of rivalry between the players and the theatrical Companies Rising to the level i was exaggerated in the film. We know all those popular entertainment extremely rivalrous. Host a lot of Competition Among the theater companies. By the end of the career he retires back in 1611. By that time theres only two Major Companies left in london and part of the reason relates back to the puritans prohibiting the production of plays. They didnt literally shut the theater sound but that is also demonstrated in shakespearean love that shuts the theaters down. Either played or later the puritans would say they were an abomination against god pretending to be some in there werent. They were even more upset about it. Guest that woman is a woman. Host i was also fascinated as a former business journalist and i covered the graphic art to learn about jagr, the blind printer. The portfolio was actually construct it. It was massive, paper was a problem. Talk a little about that. Guest let me start at the end of the story. Without many copies of the first folio to prepare it was hard to draw the inference of how the book was printed. Having many Copies Available compares that it helps you figure out how the copy was printed. The lawn in the short of it, which by the way is the phrase from shakespeare is that the book was printed from the inside out. You didnt print page one and then page two admin page three. You printed them in little booklet and started at the middle of the booklet receptor type moving from the inside out. Very hard to understand and ill explain it in the book. This meant two things. One was the printer had to estimate how much would fit on a page and fit this booklet if you have too much room, not such a big problem. Something decorative. You could virtually doublespaced attacks. That wasnt a problem. If you ran out of space you might have to print poetry. You have to align from the speech in order to make the text fit into it. It doesnt fit. If you were on microsoft word you would have justified and everything would fit to this a serologic to it. Host one thing im curious about. Looks today, hardcover books paperback books ebooks enduring a fondness for paper in many of todays books, not speaking of highquality literary or art novels about the popular fiction it does not last very long. Talk about the paper and well talk more the presentday collection of the folios. But talk about if you would want is this paper made of . Will it endanger five years, 10 years, 100 years . Guest the answer is yes. The paper used for printing the first folio with highquality rat paper from normandy, france. That is where it came from and that is what jagr used in printing the first folio. Part of that was to convey the volume to say this is something important, Something Like a paperback book would be half the size would have been printed on lower quality paper more brittle more acidic and more likely to disintegrate which is why it is much more rare. The folios have survived in pretty good numbers. People tearing plays out because it was more convenient. A pretty good number of them have survived. Is a business. Jagr wasnt doing us out of the business of his heart. He had to estimate if they made plans and then he had to sell them why someone had to sell them. How did they get into the stream of commerce . They were sold mostly out of the printer shop. Printer bookseller. Also all of the printing, book selling paper warehouses wouldve been around st. Pauls cathedral in london. Square around st. Pauls was printing what broadway is to theater. It would have been all of the bookshelves. That was in part geographic and impart land because the crown wanted to know what was in printed so not only the Printing Press as for the booksellers would have been under the watchful eye of the crown at st. Paul. Host what would it have cost it the first time . Guest a ton of publication wouldve cost a pound which is a hefty sum of money. A quarter sized by contrast for single play might have cost much cheaper. Host the first press copy of the millionaire and the bard is the same as the 10,000th copy there were some differences and variations because of the length different days for the construction of the book itself. Host two main reasons. The corrections were made while britain was going on. Page 64 for copy number 64 the printer comes over for example sometimes they put the actors name is edit the name name of the character written. We had to correct that on the fly. The crew she could be stacked with the other pages and then that new pages would have a corrected version. Every page had a single proof sheet, uncorrected page is and corrected virgins. Tangerine as every copy is slightly different. Host had jack and taken over . Guest the work was primarily beforehand. Already published version has been available in court and they added it then enact it in the days of shakespeare and have been friends for a long time. Do the debt to hamline and said now, thats not how it was. They added into the version we more commonly know. The manuscripts they wouldve had available as members of the Theater Company and their memorial recreation all would have been in how they added it essentially displays. They got to the printer shop and it was probably not so much i think who is blind at this time but wouldve done the corrections. Host what i am thinking of a shakespeare to my surprise did not become hugely popular until sometime after his death. It was a well known it to be thin playwright of quarters and people enjoyed his work it was 140 years until the popularity began to soar. With a marginalized or do people truly recognize some day this deed a valuable book . Guest i dont know the collect yours are actors are producers at the time. Someday people will recognize how great this is. In fact over that period of time we had the english civil wars which the puritans took over parliament and prohibited place or being produced which meant there were no new plays being heard but so is quite some time the shakespeare plays again come back to the stage in baghdad the public tastes have changed a little bit. The producers of the place start to change the ending. Host ive had several movies made in hollywood. Guest hector prynne walks away with a machine gun. A particular actor on a very wellknown tragic actor. He added that the plays themselves producing them in london, for example, romeo and juliet to produce ultimate night. You can imagine. And actor too kept it moving along. He cuts you ask to keep the narrative moving quickly. And so by the time we get to 150 years after shakespeares death come in the plays are quite different than what we remember. It is really by going back to rehab a good idea of how they wouldve been performed at the time shakespeare was still alive. Host this brings up an important point. Their other folios as well that i found fascinating. All of a sudden one would be familiar and you would open in a band that the new plays only one of which was attributable to shakespeare. Talk a little bit about the other folios. Host there were four altogether. Each of them got further and further away from the original tax is the edited that the plays. It would have packed it in these plays and there were hundreds of mistakes introduced and essentially the first folios fell out of nine years. They add the place to which you referred. Imagine if i could dig into my attic and say i found the manuscript of harper lees novel and 50 years posthumously or 20 years posthumous to publish them as her work. That was going on. They could make a little extra money by saying its better than the first. By this one. Host we could talk about the acquisition at one point, but they mustve had some intrinsic value. Maybe the whole panoply of folios are possible. Poster there were certain the collectors like huntington who wanted to how the complete set. Most of those collectors wanted the really good quality copies of one of each. Folger wanted every copy he could get his hands on. Good copy, bad copy it with graffiti and it, missing plays with torn pages, in fact ward holds an arresting outline of scissors or eyeglasses. He wanted them all. Host i have to bring up something. Im not going to charge royalties for this however i should let you know my last name is jeffrey deaver. According to my family be untrue genealogists and the senate is oxford Edward Deaver called the antitrust guardian spirit is that the way to pronounce that . The conspiracy theorists who feel sort of a front man. Im not going to hit you up for any royalties. People do find it fascinating. Host bradley is called the authorship. As you say, theres a group of people with various candidates for whom they believed but the plays attributed to shakespeare. A few things are important to know. One is in its lifetime nobody got a shakespeare had written. It was 150 years before someone said i dont think this man wrote the plays. This voluminous evidence of even his existing there. There is no grammar schools that show he went there. He didnt go to University Without a university education. The earl of oxford is one of the candidates. Christopher marlowe is another. For instance plakon was most popular. In the mid1800s he read a book essentially reporting that Francis Bacon had written these plays and there hadnt been anyone named William Shakespeare. s bacon had an interesting story of her own. She went to england to research the authorship question. She didnt actually do any research. She went to the town and absorb the atmosphere but didnt do any interviewing. Host fiction writers do that a lot. Guest we go there and observed the atmosphere. She demands a well although her book had an introduction written by Nathaniel Hawthorne regretted the rest of his life had written the introduction. She ended up in an insane asylum at the red light and she had an interesting life on her own. That alone doesnt mean her hypothesis is correct. However, a lot of evidence that shakespeare existed. He lived in london. He wrote plays. His contemporary playwright fellowes wrote about him as a playwright. He act within the play. The english were tremendously accurate recordkeepers. They wouldve kept a record of not only what was performed but who had written the plays they knew it at the end there were dozens of times. Elizabeth and james the first would have known who shakespeare was, whose plays they were. The white devil writes about his gambling shakespeare play right and the comic writer at the time wrote in the press preface to the first folio and elsewhere compliments about his friend William Shakespeare. We have a lot of information about connecting shakespeare. Host i did have to point out to my cousin who was an avid conspiracists because of her namesake of course he was the dever does well that Edward Deaver die before but that was first performed before several other plays as well. He said he could have written them and have none under his bad or in a cot somewhere. Host very smart. Guest the most important feature is the shaved half of shakespeares face from extinction. From that era we have records of about twice as many plays. By the time shakespeare had died, only half of the plays had been published in worse were secure are not 100 sure for being extinct. I intend to publish the other half of these plays and without the book, those plays. That was commissioned after shakespeares death. Although it was seen by family members who wouldve said thats not what you look like if it had been a problem. But they commissioned it can make an image which would be the topic of the first folio. By the way this is the first time the office picture was on the title page in such a prominent position. They wouldve provided some kind of secondary sources sketch or paint or something that we dont know. And then through that wouldve engraved it and showed it and they couldve said a little more hair, unless there, bigger mustache, whatever it was. Like a Police Sketch artist although they would have had to do not with the original source the engraver was working from because it would be hard to the race from a copper engraving. At least those who did know shakespeare wouldve seen the image and couldve said thats not what he looked like at all. House of representatives we been talking about england and the british isles. Lets cross the pond. Shakespeare and theater in general did not catch on quite as much through in colonial days until much later i have a quote from your book about puritan increased matter who said this persons bankrupted by stage with a cell phone and with much difficulty r