great things about this. thank you for taking the time. >> thank you for asking me those wonderful questions. >> it was great. >> appreciate it. >> when itunei tune in on the weekend usually is authors sharing new releases. >> the best television. >> they can now a longer conversation. >> they give the author after author of the work of fascinating people.

>> they had a big idea that the original sources would be of value to everyone in perpetuity, so they collected those materials and brought them here as a gift to the nation. >> why washington dc? >> it is an international city, our capitol. so in addition to putting this marvelous collection here they created this remarkable building which has the 1st north american to the theater with a beautiful great hall that we are in and another beautiful -- >> who are the folgers? >> president of standard oil

and he made his fortune as an oilman and then while he was running standard oil very quietly acquired the greatest shakespeare collection in the world bar none including 82 copies of the 16,231st vote in. >> we would here that term throughout the store. the 1st folio is a collection of 36 plays published by two of his friends who knew him. without that book published in 1623 we probably would not have 18 of his plays including mcbeth and 12th night and winter's tale, the most studied single edition of the book in the world and also a great connection to shakespeare, this writer

that is still using scholars today. >> put together seven years after his death. >> exactly right. >> how many of those exist? >> there probably 700 copies. there are 233 known copies. one just turned up last year in france, but there are 82 in the collection, by far the largest number in any one place and they collected the book because they knew every copy was different. they took from this pile in that pile. they knew who wanted to get at the best version have to compare. >> are the items that you have on display open to the public?

>> yes, they are. we are free and open to the public on holidays, but we were created in order to share this remarkable collection. >> how many people do you have? >> about 80,000 people year. you can see a 1st folio in the corner: of our exhibitions, shakespeare's play performed and if you are a qualified purist. >> is reading room restricted the scholars? >> people who have a good reason to use the collection. if you are not a professional scholar you need to consult something. new line open book to you.

>> about 60,000 items online one of our missions is to open the collection to people who want to visit us virtually. we will teach you how to decipher the writing. you will decipher and then add to our collection. when did he live, when did he die, was he will not?

>> this year we're celebrating the 400th anniversary of his death. and one of the things we have done this years together the documents, the talk of people whether it's in print or gossip. we wanted to get that all in one place. this year our show is our attempt to bring them together. >> we are in the display all. what is the architecture of the saw? >> what you are looking at is to your great hall of the kind you would put in a large family estate. it is actually something you would use for exercise.

you put your painting collection in this room. was what this room was designed to look like. full daylight is not good. we decided to limit the amount like. is very high ceiling a city block length also about the track work. >> comfortable in this room? >> yes. heyes. he would have done exactly what kind of illnesses. he did purchase a home in strafford place. one of the things the archaeologists suspect that he did was knocked down some of the bedroom to create a long gallery.

he must havehe must have like drums like this. it was either you're member of his family. he recognized this kind of run. >> let's look at the display items. >> going to walk over 1st. they grand house in stratford. needed to do something that we would call a title search, td clear title of his property. and so we're going to go over here. these are two halves of something that is called an indenture. when this document was executed the two sides of the dealer agreement look at either side, identical terms on each side, one is read

out allowed in the others checked to make sure the terms are identical. and it is of the wavy line so that if there is ever aa dispute you say show me the other side of this. it was a fascinating early modern front device that was used when shakespeare decided to check whether he had clear title to the property and here is the 3rd piece,piece, these two are kept by shakespeare and the other party in the agreement. shakespeare would've held one of these pieces in his hand i kept it in his home with all of his other. >> the title to the house. >> an important document. >> did he cited? >> he didn't because he did not need to. describe had to create this other counters well.

never next to the original development. this came over from london and they are bringing these pieces together for the 1st time. it is a nice symbol for what this asked -- exhibition is. never have so many documents directly connected to shakespeare ever been in one place and i doubt they ever will be again. the ability to bring together a kind of congregation is this remarkable moment of connection, so precious to have visibility. his chosen to create this online resource.

the 1st and most important stop for people trying to understand shakespeare's biography which will be one of the surviving kind of legacies of this particular initiative. >> the largest shakespeare collection. >> a mixture of feeling açai they are more films made in india and therethen there are the united states and britain combined. the ability to make the connection, the way of embodying this ongoing relationship diplomatic gatherings, customarily

serves on our board and it is important the other thing i would say is americans discovered shakespeare someone you could turn to when you were in uncertain times. the tough decisions regarding civil rights and there's something about this writer powerful language that americans felt they could just grab and use it themselves. i think of shakespeare has not go return to what we need to have a conversation that we can't have the family.

something good about the fact that he was not an american, never came to this country which gives us more latitude. that's mcbeth, lady macbeth married to richard the 3rd quote shakespeare on the floor of the senate. >> that influences writing. >> alive during the reign of queen elizabeth and king james the 1st. used to be james the 6th and he had to change his theatrical practice for

example in the play mcbeth there is a procession he would have been seeing his own ancestors in this play that whatever reflects well on him. his noble patron: someone who is directly addressing the king or queen, something you just can't say dual monarch. that he wrote a play call richard the 2nd now talk

about controversial idea, you could not suggest that. >> this mayor after march 27. the people want to come see this. >> that is an even more. there are 400 items. >> let me show you.

>> it is called the sir thomas more manuscript written in something called secretary hand which is a particular type of handwriting, it is also difficult to decipher if you have not had experience looking at that type of writing. it is part of the planet we think shakespeare wrote. how much of this resembles shakespeare but was remarkable it is it is a beautiful passage and is so timely. struggling to accommodate all the people who put their lives on the sea. the speech asks the question why would you put your family at risk and bet on the seas a piece of vellum

they are very lucky to have this document in the united states. it has never traveled out of the uk. >> is writing exist anywhere? >> that is a really good question. we have confidence that we have six signatures of shakespeare. >> in the world. >> in the world. the folder does not already signatures.signatures. our colleagues and britain have different documents. there are legal documents. there are only so many letters of someone's

signature. when you sign your name you may not cited in the same way that you write a letter to someone. that means if you want to authenticate a whole page of writing and say that it is shakespeare, you really only have a couple of letters to work with, and for that reason we would say it is tough to establish the particular piece of writing is beyond a doubt by william shakespeare, but this is aa very suggestive example. it is hard to rollout and stylistically looks a lot like him. we tend to think of it as one of those treasures. sir thomas moore was a humanist active in the 16th century, catholic, wrote the book that we now call utopia. he thought about politics,

rule, and was someone the shakespeare knew from history. >> this here is part of a play. >> that's right. the speech from that play. the reason why light is so low, for our own books we have what is,is called my budget. it will not expose a given item setting more than a certain amount of light and a constant meare constantly monitoring how much light is rounds book. >> in real time. >> yes. this writing is going to fade if you put it under light. and the reason we want to limited is we want people to be able to read these pages

centuries from now. the monitors under the particular went. >> we know enough about our collection. >> we limit the amount time. it is important for people to see. takes care of these treasures we always thinking about the trade-offs fascinated people. over a century demand from stratford, the senate was letter went to and became a

very successful writer. thrifty hard to explain. how could he be so well read , do this political balancing act and i think she was outside a lot about -- passionate interest in comparison to other people resemble these documents, what it is interesting us that there is always something more you can learn about this writer anywhere in the course of assembling

this exhibition curator has discovered errors and now letters were transcribed. what's on the back of that comeau where did it come from? and those questions is led us to take the really long look at this. anyone who looked almost all the evidence shakespeare was the man. people who were curious about this recollection is still not. welcome people but haven't

been able. >> understand. >> i would say 1st is you can access shakespeare command you mayhe may know more about you than you do yourself. editorial about the importance of the humanities. insights into who we are and shakespeare captured. and he did not write them an obscure treatises may put them on this place. so plays of the oldest interactive art form we have , participatory and if

you can see one of the place you will see people you recognize. maybe. maybe you'll understand 20 percent to 30 percent of the language. join the club. the languages 400 is 400 years old, beautifully dense and a lot of energetic expression, even if you only get that 20 pes fantastic command you may already know some of it because so many phrases that shakespeare used are actually already in our vocabulary. once those world became famous people be. look at a political headline biden as his hamlet moment. that is a really famous play.

you understand yes this heart searching decision to make. >> are you a shakespeare scholar? >> i am. >> i was a professor. this is a greata great place to share what is exciting about the humanities. i hope ii hope i more my career, but here we are two blocks east of the us capitol. the most widely read author on the planet and we can show people why this writer's ideas and characters and story still matter. >> you mentioned the reading room. >> we will have to be quiet because i to readers are working.

>> this is late medieval and renaissance architecture. renaissance architecture. on one side we have the seven ages of man, and the patterns in the stained-glass our modern on his hometown stratford. amanda bust of shakespeare, the model of one trinity church where he is buried and then a brass plaque behind which are the ashes of mr. and misses folger. that makes them the only people who are buried on capitol hill. and that is important because we are republic and we don't bury america's next to the seat of power.

we like to keep people away from the center of power. >> what goes on in this? >> researchers are working with original source materials. they are digging in. they were on the 400 year. and one of the most amazing things when you look around and see someone who has their head down. died in the past. the intensity of the connection.

>> the tourists came by. >> comfort to our on saturday afternoon. we realize that it has to last another for centuries. >> we have more see. >> thank you.

>> siding out. >> and no readers will be going. the provider readers access. >> were going belowground. >> several floors below ground level. >> we keep a rare books and manuscripts.

>> what is collected during their lifetime before they die? >> they started the collection. they have been collecting for around 80 years. a growing and dynamic collection and we acquired and give it to scholars or take pictures of inputting online. >> we are now at the vault. this is the thing falls door which is extremely heavy. felt think i could started moving in less i have helped. we will pass through now. ..

>> let me take this to dixie. one of the amazing things about being a is an addition to being chilly and highly controlled, it's also within all me several hundred yards walk from this spot, for me probably 95% of the documents i will read in my working life. for a shakespeare scholar or someone who studies the renaissance and once you are standing here, you have to contemplate or mortality because there is so much that you can read and in fact a book that

could be so important to me could just be 15 yards down here on the right so the less i know it's there for less i will see it. everyone who works in this collection cases that challenge. there's an infinity of doors and pathways that you can go down in your research and the challenge is to resist all of those opportunities or almost all of them and just take the ones that really matter to you. >> i presume there are cameras. >> yes there are. >> besides the c-span camera. >> guest: we control this space for temperature and humidity. one of the challenges for rare materials as we need to keep them dry and that is one of the threats to rare materials. a major threat to a book is for it to get wet and in fact one of the ways we deal with that threat is where they are to a water incident we would freeze the books and that's because

it's easier to thought a book out page by page then to control how those materials are changing than it is to make a quick pile and hope they don't get any more wet. we have protocols or how we would deal with that particular type of from urgency or mold which threaten rare materials or smoke or fire but that something may actively plan for. >> host: michael widmar heavy heavy overhead and incident like that? >> guest: we did not have a fire but we did have a leak in our underground fault and that was the real threat to our collection. we had to move collection material and then we need to insulate this fall because it turns out there was an underground river that was going around that area so the vault had to be resealed and we actually received some money from the federal government from the institute for museum studies and libraries to help us make that transition so that helped save our collection. >> host: what are you going to

show us today? >> guest: i'm going to show you several items that i thought you and your viewers would enjoy. the first one i will start with is the book here. >> could you show the cover? >> i can show you the cover. this is the first folio we talked about published seven years after his death. >> guest: this was published in 1623 periods and most complete single volume of shakespeare's works and it's important his friends assembled it because they probably had a better right to put shakespeare thought was important and they actually did a wonderful thing. they said here at the three types of plays, comedies history's and tragedies with which helped us. this is an engraving. it's part of the book. it's missing some copies very valuable but then john sununu shakespeare said this is a likeness of that man and that's important because it's

person-to-person familiar connections to shakespeare and so we would say this has real authority in the likeness of this writer. plus go with 82 folios in the shakespeare collection, correct? how many worldwide? >> guest: 233. posted at 233. if someone wanted to buy one what would it cost? >> there are very few first folios in private hands and complete first folios can go from five to $6 million so it's a very valuable book. >> host: currently you have first folios going around the country. >> guest: one of the things we realized is that really matters when you come face-to-face with one of the sources of shakespeare so we realize take the first folio to all 50 states and territories which is happening now and the response has just been tremendous. someone propose marriage successfully on the occasion of the first folio visit in

oklahoma. someone in new orleans, a jazz funeral for shakespeare. there's a great band doing a concert for the first folio in duluth that the way people react is very different and we been inspired by the fact that people want to see this book face-to-face. >> host: what else do you have? >> guest: let me show you a smaller version of a shakespeare play. this is what is known as a poor doing you might wonder why we call this a folio and this a porto. folio means a single sheet of paper has been printed on one side and the other in the bookmaker holds that sheet into a set of wires and their son together with one fault. the quartet was folded twice and then you cut the edges so you can come through them. this is a smaller format. it's cheaper to produce but half

of shakespeare's plays appeared in this format before the first folio was printed. so that means there are multiple editions of shakespeare's plays and there are real differences between the additions. >> host: do you mean a language? >> guest: in the likeness in the stage action. here we have mr. william shakespeare his troop chronicle history of the life and death of king layer and his three daughters. in the first folio display is not described as a history but as the tragedy. so if you are creating and edition of this play you have to decide for yourself what to call it because there are two conflicting versions of what this play is. if you are doing and addition of hamlet you have several editions and then the folio and in one of those editions that to be your not to be speech reads, to be or not to be, that's the point.

it's so different from the one we recognize and that's because there were different ways of capturing the performance and perhaps that version is from a series of scribes who were transcribing it in the audience in real time. scholars are really interested in that and they should be because ultimately you want to create additional place because people want to read them so one of the things that has happened is that we have created the addition using this collection. the best-selling high school edition in the united states and almost 90% of american high school students are reading the shakespeare play. but what we found was that we could also share these plays on line so we put them into digital form and they are now freely available, all of the plays and all of these poets which means we have put a copy of the complete works of shakespeare in

every person's backpack all around the world. >> host: what is your favorite collection? >> guest: i have two favorite plays. my first favorite play is 12 nights because i think it's a beautifully built play to each little bit works. it's like clockwork payday loan the character file a who is this , she's a great improviser and that's what gets her through the tough spots so i think that's a great virtue. i like her. i love the winner's tale. that's a play that was written late in shakespeare's career and i think it's a really beautiful play that is really meant for an adult although it sometimes feels like a fairytale and it's also the story of why people should continue to have hope for love and reconciliation and forgiveness even if experience till then it's probably not going to happen.

>> host: michael whitmore to be or not to be what does that mean? >> guest: i actually struggled with that because i had to write the panel for our traveling expedition. i think what hamlet is saying there i wake up every day and everyday i have to ask myself why do i keep doing? and that's a question that deserves careful attention i think any person who has made it to this point in their lives where they can ask big questions at some point and say what is it that makes me get up and why is it that i would keep going when i very easily could become a person that doesn't exist any more. maybe that speeches about suicide and maybe it's just a kind of a thought experiment. i tend to think it's a thought experiment that he's really talking himself into keeping going with life and it's really interesting because you are

hearing a very smart person talk himself through that decision and it's almost as if you were able to overhear the process that he go through. >> host: what else can you show us here from the archives? >> guest: this is another version of the folio, the second folio that was printed in 1832 but this is an edition that was censored by a jesuit who went through and said these passages are fine but these are somewhat challenging and so this is his writing right here. the society of jesus. as long as we don't do it for a long time we are fine and if i have the right page highlighted here i'm going to take off the snakes that are holding this page open and now i'm going to carefully open the book to

another page opening. you see that these foam cradles are here. that's to make sure we don't stress the binding. that is where of book would rake in if you come here and you look at these adages these have been expunged by the sensor and this is the end of the play called the life of king henry viii. this is a set of speeches are the passages here are praise of the new princess elizabeth who will become queen elizabeth and queen elizabeth if you are catholic is a controversial figure because of how she comes out in the post-reformation fallout so that's something that the jesuit center said we don't need this. you notice so much of the play is perfectly fine. that shows someone who says this is a marvelous document and a marvelous play. it just can't sanction this particular it eerie at people

have been censoring shakespeare for a long time. >> host: is he lewd? does he play blue? >> guest: okaye he plays blue and purple. i think shakespeare is laid out some of the most challenging pictures of what humanity is capable of, what our loves are in water desires are, good or bad, it's out there. that's what makes him a challenging writer. if you read it play like king lear and you want to wake up the next day and be your wheaties and be an optimist i don't think you can. that shows humanity as it -- at its worst and asked the question is there good in the world and shakespeare looks at right in the eye and says maybe not. it's not the answers that you get from these plays that makes them powerful. it's the big question, why do people love, lead or follow?

whether they get up in the morning? why is it that the things they think they want are really not things that they want and why are people so successful sometimes and leading others to a place for everybody needs to go and why are people so self-defeating? for example in love so many of shakespeare's plays are about the ways in which people set out to fall in love with someone or to create this happy marriage union in and the path is rocky because people seem to do the same thing over and over again that puts their beloved object out of reach and shakespeare got that. it's a fascinating thing about a human being and he didn't hold back. he wrote about all kinds of people too. you've got prostitutes and you've got fantastic canes and it got criminals. you have spirits and people would into donkeys. you get a lot. i want to show you this book. our collection covers much more

than shakespeare. it's really a picture of the english renaissance and extends through the european renaissance so we really cover the introduction of print in the 1470s through about the 1730s which is the full emergence of the atlantic world which includes the part of the world we are standing in now. this is a copy of cicero which is a schoolboy's book but this copy happened to belong to henry viii. henry viii was good king henry viii? >> guest: king henry viii. but this copy of cicero is one that henry and at dated and he says here, this book was mine, princes. just so you know. >> host: who can access this besides you, a c-span camera crew?

>> guest: you can see this on line by visiting our web site but if you are reader here we will put many of these documents in your hands because people need to look at the real thing. that's a really important point. you can learn so much by looking at it digital scan but upstairs you are going to find people who have handled 100 bucks or 500 modern books and being able to look at the paper and inc. and how it's annotated gives them as extra information. it's like if you were to do a job interview versus on the telephone you would prefer face-to-face because there's so much more information there and it's exactly the same way with historical materials. the more you work with them the more you get a sense for the feel and the touch and just how things are put together. so we will move around a little bit more. i want to show you a couple more things. this is a copy called the bishops bible.

this is queen elizabeth's the first bible. this is her bible given to her by matthew parker and it was probably used in the chapel so the readings during those celebrations in her chapel would come from this book and you can see it has this beautiful red velvet cover. it's clearly a very expensive book. it has the tudor roses here and it has her identifying marks here elizabeth regina saying she is the queen. you can also see on this side if the cameras can come in, this is actually textured on the edge of the book so you can decide has had a set of patterns carved into it. when i think about this book, this is the equivalent of a cathedral in the sense that it's

tremendously complicated. the amount of learning and craft that you have to develop in the community to get to the point where you can create a book like this is just tremendous. that's why it's created in this way and given to elizabeth and it's a monument. one of those -- it's not made out of stone but its is fabulously complicated object. you have to learn how to sit tight and you have to learn how to handle classical languages because the sources of these are created in latin and all of that learning is creating these objects. >> host: michael witmore when you see this beautiful i want to say print or maybe, you tell me what it is. the colors are still so vivid 400 years later. >> guest: this is a wonderful example of hand tinted early modern print so this is and at was called the art taley is at less. the theater of the world's are

the globe and you've got these figures representing africa here another figure here. you've got some pretty grisly stuff down here and then you've got probably something like the goddess goddess wisdom on the top or a monarch who has the set their. actually that's probably a monarch here. what is done here is they have made a beautiful printing using a copper plate so it's a high-quality print and then someone has hand the page itself. this edition is wonderful because the hand coloring extends to every plate in the edition so i would show you this one. this is europe and some of this is known well in and some of this is not known well but you can see the cathedral for national borders at the time this was created.

you have the three kingdoms here, england, ireland and scotland and then there is wales and the west. that's a pretty accurate map. guess who is pretty accurate and of course the ways in which the atlantic world took shape as their expiration and mapping so our collection holds a large quantity of items about that expiration moment which includes the moment when elizabethans come to the united states. so you have got the colonies in jamestown. that is really shakespeare's world planting itself in north america and that's a complicated history. it's part of the history of this country. it's also part of what was good and bad about claudia was him. >> host: was shakespeare where of the new world? >> guest: yes, he was. and when he wrote the tempest he clearly read a pamphlet which was about a shipwreck in bermuda

but he makes reference to stories about the new world coming back. he never visited it. he would probably have great information about it but when he uses a phrase like brave new world, he is saying that there is this place that we have explored and it's overturning our expectations about what human beings are like and what nature is like. that's something that is firing his imagination. >> host: how about one more from the archives to your and then i want to go up to the theater. >> so this is a copy of the shooting script for henry v. this was lawrence olivier's film 1945. this gives those olivier's notes to how he wanted the shot and it's interesting because the film and maybe have seen it is created during the second world

war the same frame from one of the battle scenes. this was viewed as a piece of propaganda during the second world war because it's so stirring and so much of his play is quoted in support of the idea that england is going to be triumphant. that's part of the history that we hold in the library of record for shakespeare so any expression of shakespeare's work whatever language is something where interesting collecting. that means we even have the klingon translation of hamlet. hamlet has been translated into a lot of translations. the linguist who created the klingon mind which said i need to do hamlet so he did that in that's also in our collection figures one more item i would like to show you because they think it's so important and perhaps my favorite item. this is perhaps my favorite item in the collection. this is a modest copy of shakespeare's poems in the

19th century. he can see it's portable. you can keep this in your pocket what's important about this copy though is that it's the copy that walt whitman kept in his pocket. this particular book which was inexpensive when it was purchased i think represents the direct connection between the renaissance tradition and the kind of poetry that whitman and others were creating an american medium and the 19th century so this is really one of those reasons why the two cultures are connecting an important reason by this collection is here in washington. is that we very much appreciate you sharing this with us and our viewers. let's go to the theater. michael witmore is this in anyway a public institution? so what is your budget, employees and how are you funded? >> guest: we are publicans

edition and i will tell you a story about arbor certificate. when mr. and mrs. bolger wanted to create this library they bought the property from the parcel which is across from the supreme court in across from the jefferson building. he learned to "the new york times" that they congress was about to take over this whole block for the purpose of another building for the library of congress and the road to librarians that i have a collection of shakespeare's materials that you could not afford to pay. the best in the world and it's my intention to make a gift to the american people of this collection. so the library and went to the congress and said we need to exempt that part of the parcel so they folger's and build this library. the congressional record it set the folgers created a institution is dedicated to the

public. also says they are doing the work using the library of congress. we were born as an institution with its -- which serves the nation but what's interesting about us as we don't have federal funding. mrs. -- mr. and mrs. bolger created an endowment managed by amherst college but because we are we are not a college or in diversity we can't charge tuition and we don't get federal funds unless there's a grant so that means we have to be self-sustaining. half of our 19 million-dollar budget comes from the endowment, a little more and then we raised or kerned the rest of that budget so philanthropy continuing philanthropy is really important and gives us the ability to really be the public institution that we are created to be. we have 120 full-time employees. our building is probably created for a quarter of that so we

really do have space needs and one of our challenges is how to keep this growing collection here and share with the public. >> host: michael witmore is the director of the folger shakespeare library and on april april 23, saturday joined booktv life from the folger theatre. we'll be here covering their program on the 400th anniversary of william shakespeare's death and we will be taking your calls on shakespeare saturday april 23.

>> you can buy more cheaply than the best in educating voters. and you run the risk if you were to educate the voters which is a what i think should be done they may hold you accountable. they may say what you doing in the legislation? what is your problem? and you had better folk for her oswayo not going to send it next

time. you are free to wheel and deal with other people who have greater resources or another donor class which part of their money is used by these people and you have freedom. that is cheap which is why i call it voter suppression on the cheap. that's what it is. you are suppressing choice and suppressing real democracy and doing it very cheaply.

the topic of money is or is simply been though shrouded in a lot of equations the idea of money is very basic raid we have gotten away from it and our policy make her today know less about money monetary policy than they did 100 years ago. since the early 1970s even though we have had coming decades in the 80s and 90s overall our growth rates since we went off the bretton woods system the old gold standard in 1971 the u.s. average growth rates are less than they were before 1971.

if we maintain the growth rates that we had for 180 years up to 1971, if we maintain those growth rates after 1971 on average the u.s. economy today would be 50% larger than it is now. next presidential speechwriter for gerald ford craig smith smith shares behind-the-scenes stories from his time in the white house and the importance of speechwriters during presidential elections. >> how did you get started and speechwriting? >> that's an amazing story. i was a high school debater and i