Folger Collections

The first Black actor to play a wide variety of Shakespearean roles in America, Hyman was equally loved for his portrayals of Panthro in ThunderCats and Russell Huxtable on The Cosby Show. His papers are now in the Folger collection.

We know John Donne as a famous poet and divine, but in the 17th century he was also celebrated as a letterwriter. It is no surprise, then, that after Donne and Anne More secretly married, he broke the news to his new father-in-law in a letter.

Curator Heather Wolfe shares heavily annotated books in the Folger collection from early modern readers who knew the power of underlining words, adding notes in the margins, and even an occasional doodle in anything they were reading.

One of the books in the Folger collection is extraordinary for both its cover, the War of the Roses binding created by book artist Léon Maillard, and its contents, the Pavier quartos, an early try at publishing a collection of Shakespeare’s plays.

Henry Irving and Ellen Terry were beloved for their Shakespeare performances, whether at London’s Lyceum Theater or on tour. New additions to the Folger collection show the acclaimed artists at work and play in Victorian England.

Porras, a Folger Artist Fellow, shares what inspired him, from the Folger collection to Indigenous futurism, in the creation of his new media work, de Bry’s Slipstream.

Folger Artist Fellow Missy Dunaway shares what she’s learning while working on The Birds of Shakespeare, her project to paint the 65 birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s works.

Ansel shares how her questions as an artist fellow about Fuseli’s take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth inspired her to create two abstract, large-scale oil paintings but this time from a woman’s perspective that celebrates the play’s sisterhood.

Explore First Folios owned by two 17th-century women, a prop dagger used by a leading actress of the late 19th century, and scripts and programs from a 20th-century women’s theater in Japan that’s still performing Shakespeare today.

One of 18th-century Britain’s most prolific narrative painters, Henry Fuseli found inspiration in Shakespeare, with his painting of Macbeth and the witches one of his “best poetical conceptions.”

A letter to Elizabeth I from the earl of Leicester, who was organizing the defense of Britain against the Spanish Armada at the time, shows their playful relationship.

Go behind the scenes of our exhibition, Little Books, Big Gifts: The Artistry of Esther Inglis. 400 years after her death, Inglis “can still make the whole place shimmer.”