Welcome to the Folger
Enjoy great stories | Explore what makes you curious | Share the best in art, history, and literature with friends and family at the world’s largest Shakespeare collection.
Plan your visit
Get details and reserve timed-entry passes.
Explore our exhibitions
See what’s on view in our galleries.
Take a tour
Reserve a group tour or student experience.
Check out our shop
Gifts, games, merch, and more!
Eat at Quill & Crumb
Enjoy lunch or a quick snack at our café.
The Reading Room Festival:
Jan 22–25
Folger Theatre’s fourth annual Reading Room Festival returns with four days of staged readings, panel discussions, workshops, and community celebrations.
What’s on
Join us for talks, poetry, music, and other programs.
Imagining Shakespeare: Mythmaking and Storytelling in the Regency Era
On View: Dominick Porras
Not Just Another Day Off 2026
Award-winning poet María Fernanda—whose works explore the intimacy of sisterhood, the anchor of intergenerational coexistence, and grief—will also present historic passages, speeches, and a selection of poems written by herself, June Jordan, Nikki Giovanni, and other notable voices.
Our Shakespeare Exhibition
Shakespeare as a Starting Point: Shakespeare and the American Musical
Making Myths: the Legacies of William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, and American Actors
Cymbeline: A Telenovela Melodramatic Western
About us
How did the world’s largest Shakespeare collection end up one block from the US Capitol? Explore the Folger’s origin story.
The latest from our blogs and podcast
Folger Faves: January 2026
Senior Photography Associate William Davis shares his five favorite collection items in our new series: Folger Faves.
Q&A with Barbara Fuchs
Barbara Fuchs shares insight into her work as founder and director of Diversifying the Classics, which promotes the vibrant, Spanish-language theatrical tradition developed on both sides of the Atlantic. In this Q&A she also discusses Lope de Vega’s prolific career as a playwright and what it’s like to adapt his work for younger audiences.
Shakespeare and America
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we’re exploring the larger-than-life role played by an English playwright from more than 400 years ago in American entertainment, education, and history. Enjoy a round-up of Folger podcasts and blog posts about Shakespeare’s influence in America.
Spain's Golden Age of Theater
While Shakespeare was reshaping English drama, Spain’s Golden Age was producing its own theatrical revolution. Barbara Fuchs discusses the innovations of Lope de Vega and his contemporaries and Diversifying the Classics’s mission to bring plays in Spanish to new audiences.
Q&A with Alberto Bonilla
Playwright Alberto Bonilla shares how Shakespeare’s Cymbeline reminds him of telenovelas and spaghetti westerns. He also discusses the process of adapting a bilingual play and why setting Cymbeline in the American West works.
Quiz: Who said (or wrote) that?
Shakespeare has been so influential that quotes by other writers, often centuries later, are wrongly credited to him. Take our quiz about the quotes he didn’t write!
Our collection
The First Folio
The Folger has the world’s largest collection of First Folios. Learn more about the book that gave us Shakespeare.
A majestic portrait
The Folger collection includes about 200 paintings. This portrait of Queen Elizabeth I by George Gower is dated 1579, making it the oldest painting in our collection. Two years after he completed this portrait, Gower became Serjeant Painter to the Queen, making him the most important artist in England.
Our other Elizabeth I holdings include hand-signed letters, books, and even New Year’s gift rolls detailing her holiday gifts. It is the largest collection of Elizabeth I materials in North America.
Shakespeare’s works
View the full list of plays and poems to read, search, and download our bestselling editions of Shakespeare’s works.
Shakespeare’s most popular plays
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Julius Caesar
Othello
Hamlet
Explore
What was Shakespeare's theater like?
Learn about the Globe and other London playhouses where Shakespeare’s company performed. What was it like to be an actor there, or an audience member?
Teach
How can Shakespeare help 21st-century students be stronger readers?
Our Folger Method is revolutionizing how not just Shakespeare but all literature is taught using strategies that allow all students to own – and enjoy – complex texts.
Research
If we are what we eat, what can recipes from the past tell us?
Projects like Before ‘Farm to Table’ unite scholars and practitioners in investigations into the past to shed light on what matters to us today.
Support the things you love
Your gifts make access to our collection, learning opportunities, and exciting experiences happen.