>> booktv result of the two of the folger shakespeare library in washington, d.c. it holds the largest shakespeare collection in the world. here's a portion of that to her. >> this was published in 1623. it's the most complete single volume record of shakespeare's works and it's important his friends assembled a because they probably had a better idea of what shakespeare thought was important. they did a wonderful thing. they said he our the types of plays, comity, history tragedy. this is integrating that was part of the book missing from some copy tickets are available in an of itself but ben johnson

who knew shakespeare says this is a likeness of that name. that's important because once again one of those person-to-person familiar connections to shakespeare. we would say this has real authority in the likeness of this writer. >> eighty-two folios in the shakespeare collection. direct? >> correct. >> how many worldwide? >> 233. >> if somebody wanted to buy one, what would it cost? >> that are very few first folio is in private hands. complete first folios can go between six and $9 million. is a very valuable book. >> you have first folios going around the country. >> one of the things we realize is that really matters when you come face-to-face with one of the sources so we realized we could safely take a first folio to all 50 states into the two territories which is what's happening now. the response has been

tremendous. someone propose marriage successfully on the occasion of the first folios visit in oklahoma. someone -- a funeral, a jazz funeral for shakespeare, a great indie rock band that is doing a concert for the first folio in duluth. so the ways people react are very different. we've been inspired by the fact that people want to see this book face-to-face. >> what else do you? >> let me show you a smaller version of a shakespeare play. this is what's known as a quardo. a single sheet of paper has been pinned on one side and the other. the bookmaker fold up the sheet into a set of choirs and their son together but it's one fault. a quardo is folded twice.

then you cut the edges so you can thumb through them. this is a smaller format, cheaper to produce but half of shakespeare's plays appeared in this quardo format before the first folio was printed. so that means there are multiple editions of shakespeare's plays. there are real differences between the quardo condition ad. in the language and also in some of the stage action. so here we have mr. william shakespeare, is to chronicle history of the life and death of king lear and his three daughters. in the first folio displays not described as a history but as a tragedy. so if you're creating an admission of display you have to decide for yourself what you call it because they are two conflicting versions of what this play is. if you're doing an edition of hamlet you have several quardo

editions, and in one of those editions, the to be or not to speech reads, to be or not to be, that's the point. it's so different from the one that we recognize. that's because there were different ways of capturing the performance, and perhaps that version is from a series of scribes were transcribing it in the audience in real time. scholars are really interested in debt. our collection covers much more than shakespeare. but actually a picture of the entire english renaissance and extends the european renaissance. we really cover the introduction of print in the 1470s through about the 1730s which is the fault emergence of the atlantic world, which includes a part of the world we are standing in now. this is a copy of cicerone which is a schoolboy's book but this copy happen to belong to henry viii.

henry viii -- >> king henry viii? >> king henry viii. divorce beheaded died, divorce, beheaded, survived. he says in his early modern spelling this book is mine, prince henry. just so you know. >> who can access this besides you, a c-span camera crew? >> you can see this online by visiting our website but if you are a reader, we will put many of these documents in your hands because people need to look at the real thing. that's an important point. you can learn so much by looking at a digital scan but upstairs you're going to find people who have handled 100 books or 500 early modern books. being able to look at the paper and ink and how it is annotated gives them all this extra

information. it's like you go to a job interview face-to-face versus on the telephone, you would prefer face-to-face because they're so much more information. it's exactly the same way with historical materials. the more he worked with them the more you get a sense from the feel and the touch and just how things are put together. >> we will move around a little bit more. i want to show a couple more things. this is a topic called the bishops bible. this is queen elisabeth the first bible. this is for bible. this was given to her by matthew parker. it was probably used in her chapel. the readings during the celebrations in her chapel would've come from this book and you can see it has this beautiful red velvet collar. good and very expensive book. it hasn't a tudor roses and it has identifying mark here,

elizabeth regina, saying that she is the queen. you can also see on this side of the cameras can come in, this has been pictured on the edge of the book. even aside has had a set of patterns carved into it. when i think about this book, peter, 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 as a community to get to the point where you can create a book like this is just tremendous. that's what it's created in this way because it's given to elizabeth and it's a monument. it's not made out of stone, but it's fabulously complicated object. you have to learn how to set type. you have to learn how to handle classical languages because the sources for these our greek and latin. at all about bernie goes into

creating these bit of objects. >> when you see this beautiful, i want to say print, or may become determine what it is, the colors are still so vivid 400 years later. >> this is one of the example of hand colored or hand-painted or the modern print. so this is an atlas, latin title, the theater of the world or the globe, and you 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 wisdom on the topic or -- that's probably a monarchy or. what's done is they made a beautiful printing using a copper plate that's been etched. so it's a high quality print,

and then someone his hand colored the page itself. this addition is wonderful because the hand covering extends to every plate in the edition. which, sherry this one. this is in europe, and some of this is known well and some of it is not known well but you can see the cathedrals, a national borders at a time that was created. you have the three kingdoms here, england, ireland and scotland, and there's whales here in the west. >> it's a pretty accurate map. >> is pretty accurate. of course, the way in which the atlantic world takes shape as through exploration and mapping. to our collection holds a large quantity of items about that exploration moment complicated lives a moment when elizabethan's, well, jacobean's comp united states.

you've got the colonies in jamestown. that is only shakespeare's world planting itself in north america. that's a complicated history. is part of the history of this country but it's also part of what was good and bad about colonialism. >> with william shakespeare unaware of the new world? >> yes, he was. when he wrote the tempest he pretty clearly read a pamphlet which was about a shipwreck in bermuda, but he makes reference to stories about the new world that were coming back, he never visited it. he probably would have great information about it, but when he uses the phrase like brave new world, he is saying that there's this place that we have not explored and its overturning our expectations about what human beings are like and what nature is like. that's something that is firing his imagination.

>> that was just a portion of the two are the booktv took of the folger shakespeare library. you can watch the full to work online at booktv.org. tv on c-span2 will be live from the folger shakespeare library at noon on saturday april 23. this is commemorate the 400th anniversary of william shakespeare's death. ..