To watch previews the festival coverage click the book fairs that on our website, bookt booktv. Org. [inaudible] there we go. Ill start over. Welcome. Thanks for coming today. O my name is Susan Barribeau and then work for the madison u libraries as a specialas a collections librarian come and englishlanguage Managers Library in. Welcome to the wisconsin bookies festival. I would like to introduce today our offer, andrea mays who will be talking about her book as this fantastic cover, the millionaire and the bard. Tell you a little bit about andrea mays. Like henry folger been possessed by a lifelong obsession with shakespeare and his times. Andrea spent much of her manhattan girl could hold up and new public labor listening to vinyl of the recordings of performances by the royalo vinyl shakespeare company. A graduate of dispatches that only a protege of frank mccourta but also of his own mentor, the legendary new York Public School teacher. And are has degrees in economics, from State University of new york, binghamton and from ucla. And teaches economics at cal State University at long beach. She was a president ial appointet to the u. S. International trade commission where she served as economist to the chairman. Io she divides her time between california and washington. The millionaire and the barder is her first book. Caia its an excellent read about ant extraordinary book, the first folio, and about Henry Clay Folger and his wife emily folger, passionate fans of shakespeare and passionate, obsessed collectors. They are the founding of the Folger Shakespeare library in washington, d. C. , thats their gift to the United States, to the people of the United States. I will not say much more but ias will andrea mays tell this story. Thank you. [applause] high. Welcome everybody. Thank you for coming out. Im going to talk a little bitm about the book, how i came to write it, what its about, and why the timing of this book was incredibly fortunate. And im also going to give you an assignment, something to do starting november 3. Theres going to be a copy of first folio that you can visit at the university of wisconsin. So ill get to that at the end of my story. So first i want to talk a little bit about how i came to write ah this book, how did the idea come to me, what, you know, spurred me to do this. My obsession with shakespeare began as a lot of obsession i think do, as a result of an excellent teacher who introducet me to the plays of shakespeare, starting in middle school and then working my way through high school. I had excellent teachers for others be then and jacobean theater and literature, and i was bitten by the bug and were off and running. I have been reading the plays,in seeing the plays being performed since then. When it came time to write a book, someone recommended to me that i do write about something i already knew a Little Something about so that i was not going to be starting fromtam ground zero and perhaps been a great deal of time with something i didnt enjoy. And so my sister said, well, how about shakespeare, something related to shakespeare . Wasnt quite sure exactly subject to write about because thousands of books have beenwh written about shakespeare. And so what could i do that was a little bit different . So heres how it happened. I start with shakespeare in hig school, and then, we use the folger additions of the shakespeare plays in high school, so if you have not used a folger addition of the plays, they are paperback books and on one side of the page is attacksb and on the facing page our definitions. So its very helpful, you dont have to go to the bottom, you dont have to go to the back of the book. And that was my first exposure to this folger something or another. Later at ucla in law school i came across a Henry Clay Folger as a defendant in the famousus standard oil antitrust case fros 1911, and i wonder if its in a relation whatsoever to the folger editions. Hmm. Then they moved to washington, d. C. In the 1980s and walked by the Folger Library everyday on my way to work. At some point i went into the folger for one of their tours and asked where the money had come from that built this collection and built the library, and it doesnt said mr. Folger work for an oil company. Au and i thought this is something that was worthy of a little more research, a littlere investigation, and that was how i started reading the two stories together. I grew up in new york cityy surrounded by the trappings of the gilded age. So the carnegie mansion was across the street from a church. The frick mansion was across the street from the bus stop the i got all that in middle school. Our science trips were up to ths rockefeller preserve and so when. So ive been surrounded by the gilded age since i can remembert and all of that comes out in the book the millionaire and the bard. Somebody what the millionaire and the bard is about to its two separate stories, to treat the time, elizabethan and jacobean england, london mostly come and new york during the gilded age. And how we move from one store to the other is connected through a book. And thats the book that he wrote about, shakespeares first folio. Let me digress for a minute and talk a moment about who shakespeare was. You may be unaware that this is the 400th anniversary of shakespeares death, this year. H so many events are going on around the United States and elsewhere to celebrate this, or commemorate this event, including the exhibit at the university of wisconsinmadison, which ill talk a little bitt. About. With shakespeare died, so we are celebrating 400 years later, the great works that has been left h behind. When he died it was by no means a sure that he would become the secular god of englishlanguage literature. He had contemporaries our extremely talented. Its not like he was the only playwright of the era, if you still remember. But when he died only half of his plays have been published. F and none of those have been published with his permission. So let me explain a little bitit why that wouldv would have bee. At the time there was no copyright law. S the copyright act, act of queen and did not come into existence until 1709 in england and, therefore, the author had no Property Rights in their own place. They would essentially sell the plays to the Theater Companies outright. And then the Theater Companies didnt want to publish the place because anyone who got hold of a copy would be able to perform a play in competition with them. So they didnt want the plays performed, so how did half of the plays, nonetheless, get out into, get published . And the answer is high rates. High rates. The printers would, for example, hire a minor player from acting company to recreate the play as they knew it. And they would say come on in, have a seat. Hamlet, go. And then they would just write down as fast as they could whatever they came up with. Sometime with some interesting another great effect. Another thing they would do isto to send a sonographer out into the audience when the play was being performed and have them g write as good as they could whatever was going on in the play. I did was sometimes with mixed results. So half of the plays, including hamlet, were already published in sort of paperback versions. If you took a very large piece of paper, folded it once, folded in quarters again, that would be about the size of a paperback book and a single plan would be published in that format by these pirate printers. Y thes the other half of the plays we know about because there were diarists at the time who attended plays who wrote about them, but we would not have copies of them had a book not been published by shakespearess friends seven years after shakespeares death. So its 1616, shakespeare dies. When he goes into the ground half of the plays again are in danger of evaporating. And two of his friends, fellow actors in the Globe Theatre company, decided to collect shakespeares plays, edit them and publish them as a memorial to their deceased friend. They made a couple of interesting decisions. One was they were going to publish this all in one volume, and in order to do that they would have to do it in an extremely large format. So about 13 inches by eight inches is the format. If you have a very large piece of paper and defaulted it only once, that would be a folio size. And it was extraordinarily to publish place in that format, in part, those works, sorry, that size had been reserved pretty much for serious works of religious or political importance, not for something as ephemeral as place. And you might be aware of the history of the theater during elizabeth and james raynes, that the puritans had a great deal of power in parliament, including one of elizabeths trusted advisors. The puri the puritans were against theater because it was an offense to god to pretend to be something that you were not. So imagine at the time that elizabeth is raining that only men and boys on the stage, not women. So not only with a pretended to be something they werent, but these reporters pretending to bb women. This was more than the puritans could handle. So these two men, John Hennings and henry, two great Unsung Heroes of english languagegeunsf literature who spent almost no one knows, but you do now, collected the source of wouldve been available to them including these paperback versions of the plays. Whatever manuscript that mighthh have available to them as members of the Theater Company because they would of old that managed to outright and they came with something that no other publisher couldve had and that was the knowledge of how the plays have been performed. Because they were acting in those plays with shakespeare ors under his direction. So when it came to taking, lets say, a quarto version of hamlet and reading soliloquy, they might say no, thats a that we did it. Does not win. Thats not how we performed a. That. So they essentially became the first editors of shakespeares top and left us with a version of the plays that we know today. So the sources that they mightve assembled no longer exist and theres no diary froml hennings or Henry Condell tell you what to do but we see some ice what with the sources that mightve been available to them. What are some of the plays that wouldve been lost . You might be through with some of them. How many of you read macbeth in high school . That is when the wouldve been lost. I no macbeth, no tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. No sound and fury. Naudib now out damn spot, thank you. Out damn spot. No tempest, know full, my father lies. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him has changed, something rich and strange. Al all of that wouldve disappeared had this book not been published. So antony and cleopatra, a long list of 18 place that wouldve disappeared have the book not been published. So the book is published in 1623. This giant volume you could have bought in sheets, so just the paper for a pound, then you could have brought it to your favorite binder and they could about it to your taste. And the original bindings, 17th century bindings for these books, became extremely valuable and extremely coveted in the collecting world. So not going to talk a littlehe bit about how the first, this book we called shakespearespe first folio, how that evolved, the clicking of the evolved through the centuries. H the ce and the edge is it became a fetish object. It is not an especially rare book, surviving in a number of 235, although to wider 36 is about to be announced, so stay tuned for that. 235 copies are known to survive. With th be quarto editions of te plays are far more rare. Ly two w shall only two copies of one of the quartos of hamlet survived, neither of them is complete. So what other British Library is missing one page. Un the one that they Henry Huntington museum in pasadena is missing a different page, and so together it was one complete copy. There is a single knownn, surviving copy of Titus Andronicus from 1957, the first play of shakespeares that was published while shaker was alive and that single copy was found in a library in sweden and later bought by henry folger. So that is the only copy remain in the world, and i have heldt. It. Right. So the first folio as a major became a fetish object, particularly product to the gilded age but particularly in the gilded age it was a fetish object for collectors. S. Mostly collectors would want a single excellent copy, big original 17th century bindings, containing all the plays and then theres some leaves in the book that are particularly valuable. Those that you would expect over 400 years to get the most damage to the first page, the last page, the last page is the last page assembling. Thats fairly rare. The portraitur portrait page ths shakespeare, thats partly on the cover of time nine, not by the way is one of two known likenesses not sun from life. But done well people who knew shakespeare were still alive. So when they collected these plays and engaged more into sector to the engraving they couldve said no, thats not what he looked like. More hair, lesser, shorter mustache, right ask him whatever it was. Wh these are people who knew shakespeare and, therefore, could have said this is what hee looked like. The other like despite what is the effigy of shakespeare in the church was also down, commissioned by his soninlaw and, therefore, someone wouldve known what he looked like. So the typical collectort wouldve wanted a high spot including the portrait page, for example, and there are many copies of that in the folder collection. One of but that is one of the more valuable pages in the book. Let me talk a little bit about so the high spot. So someone like Henry Huntington, jpmorgan, wouldve collected the really beautiful complete copy of the new wouldve gone on to something else. So the huntington collection has first folios in it but also his jack london and Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln and all kinds of other things. Henry folger was different from these collectors and that he singlemindedly pursued anything related to shakespeare. When i see anything related to shakespeare, it could be tangentially related to shakespeare. Ta it mightve been source material, it mightve been related to something that shakespeare might have known about or any the shakespeare might have known about. But basically singlemindedly collecting shakespeare. So let me talk a little bit about who henry folger was, because most people dont knowpo who he was and that was part of the reason to write the book. His Henry Clay Folger was born in brooklyn in the 1830s, middleclass family. His father was a milliner supplier. He went to amherst college, and while he was at school his fathers business went bankrupt and he moved back to new york city, enrolled in city college of new york which was tuition for at the time, and because a friend that hed gone to school with said no, no, you have to finish at amherst, he was able to arrange a loan that enabled them to go back to amherst. So the better arranged a loan for them later became his mentor and employer, charles pratt. And ill talk a little bit more about him later. He appears as a character a little bit later on, as does hip son, charlie pratt, who insist becoming one of henries lifelong friends. So henry finishes amherst, moves back to brooklyn, and roles in night school at Columbia Law School to go to work as a clerk in the Pratt Oil Company. The Pratt Oil Company in brooklyn is then taken over by standard oil of new york with john d. Rockefeller at the helm. Pratt becomes begin an executive in the standard or company, and henry starts at the bottom as a clerk and works his way up, eventually becoming president of the standard or company of new york. 1911 the antitrust case against standard oil results in it being split into 36 different companies, the largest piece to standard oil of new jersey the second largest the standard all of new york, and that is the one that hundred becomes the president of comment and later becomes the chairman of the board. So from being a clerk he works his wake he works his way up to being chairman of the board. So 95 he is writing excuse me, hes running the Worlds Largest corporation, and then after work he goes home, and his wife it was was a shakespearean her own right, she ran herers masters thesis at faster on the two decks of shakespeare, he and his wife would go through catalogs and order things for their collections. And open the packages that arrive, examined the books, read the books. They were not dilettantes. To read the books that they bought the examined the books they bought the they wrote about shakespeare, read about shakespeare, went to the place,t but the place come examined the place but they were very muchth involved in the shakespeare world together. They would examine these books. Emily would write out an indexib card with all the bibliographic information, including where they purchased it, what its condition was go to the dealer was, et cetera. And then when the house, everything on clinton hill in brooklyn, became so full with the books that they could nolong longer fit in there, they would take the books down to theke basement, wrap them and put them into a case come and when the case was filled, they would ship it off to storage. And they did this case after case after case after case come in various fireproof warehouse in manhattan and brooklyn. T and when the room in the warehouse became filled withse cases, they would rent another room. And i looked at bills for one r particular storage room at a warehouse in brooklyn for over 30 years. They paid storage fees on the. So at the very end, there are almost 2000 cases that they have packed full of materials and put away. How could you possibly hope to find anything if you at thousands of cases and hundreds of thousands of items . Even emily typed up come eventually with a typewriter, she typed up the inventory in each case, and henry personally drew a map of each room and said w