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.
The Folger is open! New exhibition galleries, gardens, and shop
Explore our exhibitions
See what’s on view in our galleries.
Plan your visit
Get details and reserve timed-entry passes.
Check out our shop
Gifts, games, merch, and more!
Folger Frost Fair
Celebrate the season with a month-long winter festival at the Folger. Enjoy festive decorations, holiday music, free activities, and more.
Quill & Crumb
Our new café is now open! The seasonal menu features shareable snack plates, salads, sandwiches, and a variety of coffees, teas, and baked goods.
What’s on
Join us for in-person and virtual events: theater, poetry, music, and more.
Little Books, Big Gifts: The Artistry of Esther Inglis
Family Workshop: To Be a Shakespearean Actor
A Mass for Christmas Eve
Imprints in Time
Folger Salon with Shaul Bassi and Sylvia Korman
Lifelong Learners: Shakespeare 101: A Reintroduction
Author Talk and Reading: "The Girls of Godzilla, Illinois" with Jami Nakamura Lin
Edmond Dédé and Morgiane
Our Shakespeare Exhibition
News and announcements
Folger Shakespeare Library Names Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper as Director
Press release: May 20, 2024
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
What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters in December
It’s officially Christmas Carol season! See what’s playing at our Shakespeare Theater Partners around the country this December.
Anthony Trollope reads Christopher Marlowe
Explore the (often biting) commentary that Victorian novelist Antony Trollope left in a copy of Marlowe’s plays.
Books for Shakespeare fans
2024 has been a great year for new books about—and inspired by—Shakespeare. Explore our list for gift giving or adding to your own TBR list.
The Lead-Up to Shakespeare’s Richard II
In an excerpt from The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, historian Helen Castor travels back in time to the weeks just before Shakespeare’s play begins.
Holiday Festivities and Elizabethan Theater
Erika T. Lin studies early modern holidays and her work has yielded some surprising revelations—not only about the festivities themselves, but about the relationship between holidays and what we now think of as “theater.”
Convivial Cleopatra
An examination of Cleopatra’s racialized and sexualized queenship through the twinned theoretical frameworks of indigenous and queer conviviality
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.