In August 2002, one month after Gail Kern Paster became the Folger Shakespeare Library’s sixth director, her worst nightmare happened: Water began seeping into the underground rare-book vault. Any plans she might have had for the Folger took a back seat to keeping the priceless collection safe. Looking back on the crisis from her wood-paneled office filled with Shakespeare memorabilia, Paster says she is proud to have met the challenge.
She led staff and building contractors to the completion in November 2004 of a newly waterproofed rare-book vault, in the process adding 25 years of storagespace. Along the way, they moved 900 boxes of books two to three times, including 28,000 books to a bunker at Amherst College. Paster, committed to the idea that the Folger be accessible, decided to continue with scholarly, educational and public activities during the project. She halted construction during student performances, encouraged staff members to use headphones to distract them from the noise and handed out earplugs to visiting scholars.
The Folger boasts the finest collection of Shakespeare materials in the world, and today seems an apt moment to celebrate its distinction. On this day in 1564, Shakespeare was born; on this day in 1616, the Bard died at age 51. And on Sunday, the Folger marks a milestone of its own: its 75th anniversary. That’s when the library culminates its yearlong anniversary celebration with Shakespeare’s Birthday Open House. Members of the public will be entertained by jugglers and jesters, have a chance to recite favorite lines from Shakespeare on the Folger stage, and tour the library’s reading rooms.
The Folger is tucked between the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill. Among many other treasures, the Folger has 79 copies of Shakespeare’s “First Folio,” published posthumously in 1623 by two actor colleagues. Without this volume, many of Shakespeare’s plays, including “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “As You Like It,” would be lost. According to Paster, the two most recent “First Folios” sold at auction for a record $6.1 million and more than $5 million.
Paster was a young child when she fell in love with the work of Shakespeare, devouring world literature classics in “The Book House,” and her connection grew in high school and beyond. She made sure her two children had a solid grounding in productions of Shakespeare, and she believes it has had a lasting effect on them. She’s firm about the necessity of seeing the plays performed.
“It’s essential,” she says. “People talk about Shakespeare as if he doesn’t require animation. I really do credit [my children’s interest in Shakespeare] to growing up in D.C. at a time when theater was exploding in the city. With characters who remain in our imaginations and great language … what you have is admiration and love for this artist who has given us intense delight.”
At least on the part of the public, a burning question is whether Shakespeare really wrote all those plays and sonnets. Not so with Paster.
“He did,” she says. “There are enough contemporary accounts of Shakespeare the actor and playwright to persuade anyone but conspiracy theorists. I think it matters a lot to give credit to the producer of this body of work.” She adds that people who think otherwise have “a massive misunderstanding of England at the turn of the 17th century. It was a very gossipy time; something like that couldn’t have been kept secret.”
Standard Oil executive Henry Clay Folger and his wife, Emily Jordan Folger, founded a library of rare books in 1932. They could not have imagined the high-tech additions now offered by the library, including podcasts and a touch-screen display of the “First Folio.” Paster firmly believes that the Folger must keep up with the times, and she enthusiastically embraces ways to make the library more friendly and exciting.
“We wanted to be more visible to the Washington community, and I really think we did it. The challenge is how to keep doing it,” she says. “We’ll keep buying books, producing public programs, growing teacher training nationally. We have affirmed and modernized the mission and embrace technology, though the book will never be replaced.”
Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed, but professional theater productions in the Folger’s beloved Elizabethan Theatre have been off and on. The Folger abolished its theater company in the early 1980s, citing a drain on library resources. Public outcry resulted in the establishment of an independent organization, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, which performed in the Folger space for several years and now has a home at the new Harman Center for the Arts. In the “All’s Well That Ends Well” category, the Folger began to produce theater again in 1991, and the budget challenges appear to have been conquered.
Michael Kahn, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre, terms his relationship with Paster very cordial and sayshe has a lot of respect for her. “People are beginning to understand that we’re two different organizations,” he says, and adds with a laugh, “It has taken me about 15 years.” In the future, he would like to collaborate more on education and theater programming.
The Folger’s rare-book vault, not open to the public, is a block long and houses 316,000 books and manuscripts. Those lucky enough to tour the space with Paster enter through an alarmed, barred door that resembles a super-secure bank vault. One room, with no book published after 1640, contains all the “First Folios,” along with the second, third and fourth editions.
When asked about a favorite book, Paster enters another room and gently takes from the shelf a small volume containing the Book of Psalms published in 1639, elaborately embroidered in worn silver and gold thread with the story of David and Goliath. “Women held these in their hand or carried them in their pocket,” she says. “You just know that they were cherished, that they had a lifetime of use.”
