Welcome to the Folger Shakespeare Library!

Located on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, the Folger is a world-renowned research center on Shakespeare and on the early modern age in the West. Its conservation lab is a leading innovator in the preservation of rare materials. Its well-known public programs include plays, concerts, literary readings, family activities, and exhibitions, as well as numerous K–12 and college programs for students and teachers. Advanced scholars participate in a variety of Folger Institute seminars and colloquia.

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201 East Capitol Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003

Public Hours
Monday–Saturday: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Sunday: 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Reading Room Hours
Monday–Friday: 8:45 am – 4:45 pm
Saturday: 9:00 am – 12:00 pm,
1:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Reading Room and Folger offices are closed on Federal holidays

  • Now playing

    Peter Oswald’s bold new translation of Schiller’s vivid re-imagining breathes life into a Tudor world flush with subterfuge and revenge—and ruled by two extraordinary women.

    Playing through March 8.

    Buy tickets

  • Coming soon

    In a world where heads always wins and pirates can happen to anyone, this fabulously inventive, existentialist tragicomedy thrusts two of Shakespeare’s most incidental characters into the limelight.

    Playing May 12 through June 21.

    Learn more

Upcoming at the Folger

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Exhibitions

Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude

MARCH 19 – AUGUST 23, 2015

Podcasts

Robben Island Shakespeare

A cleverly disguised copy of Shakespeare’s complete works was once secretly circulated among a group of South African political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. Our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast explores this remarkable book and what it meant to the men who read it.

Listen

Education

Emily Jordan Folger Children's Shakespeare Festival

You're never too young for Shakespeare! 

Every spring, the Folger Children's Festival brings hundreds of students in grades 3–6 together on our stage and in our Great Hall to perform Shakespeare for one another. Applications for this year's festival are now being accepted.

Collection

Manuscript collection

The Folger collection includes some 60,000 handwritten documents dating from the 15th to the 21st century, offering unique windows onto life in Shakespeare’s time, later writers' fascination with Shakespeare, and the development of the English theater over the centuries.

Folger Institute

Fellowships

How do scholars learn more about the early modern world? They spend time with the Folger’s primary sources in rigorous conversation with others in pursuit of their own research questions. Our fellowship program has gathered many hundreds of scholars from dozens of countries in a vibrant and changing intellectual community.

Applications for short-term fellowships are due March 1st.