Shakespeare's First Folio

Guest: David Kastan, PhD, Professor of English at Yale University  “Friends, Romans, countrymen… lend me your ears.”  That famous line from “Julius Caesar,” one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, might have been lost to history along with 18 other Shakespearean classics including Julius Caesar, Macbeth and As You Like It. They were saved for posterity by a couple of Shakespeare’s acting buddies who took the unusual step, shortly after his death, of publishing 36 of the bard’s plays in a rare collection known as The First Folio.  Today, it’s common for drama lovers to have a collection of Shakespearean works bound in a single volume, but in the mid-1600s, such a publication was a rare honor for an artist - and not one that Shakespeare himself would have cared much about.  To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, a copy of The First Folio is visiting all 50 states this year.