The Folger Shakespeare Library is filled with Elizabethan architectural motifs, including many references to Shakespeare and his works. A small number of these elements are directly connected to the First Folio of Shakespeare, which is at the heart of the Folger collection; the Folger Shakespeare Library includes 82 First Folios, the largest collection in the world.
The inscriptions on the building’s exterior and interior walls include two passages from the First Folio's preliminary pages as well as lines from Shakespeare's plays. Henry Folger asked that the lines from Shakespeare that he selected for the exterior Folger inscriptions be based on the First Folio spelling, rather than written in modern English.
Related Exhibition:
A Monument to Shakespeare: The Architecture of the Folger Shakespeare Library (Apr 13, 2019 – Jan 5, 2020)
Several of the key figures connected to creating the First Folio are also honored in the stained-glass windows of the historic Reading Room. The windows include the names of Shakespeare's colleagues John Heminge and Henry Condell, who assembled the plays for the First Folio; playwright Ben Jonson, who wrote two poems for the First Folio; publisher Edward Blount, who led the syndicate that financed the First Folio; printer William Jaggard, who also participated in the syndicate with Blount; and Isaac Jaggard, William's son, who finished the First Folio after William Jaggard died.
The stained-glass windows also include the names and heraldic coats of arms for the two noble brothers to whom the First Folio is dedicated: William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, who became the fourth Earl of Pembroke.