Lecture given by Hillary Eklund, Associate Professor of English, Loyola University as part of the First Folio! event.

The First Folio! exhibition at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane — part of the international events planned for 2016 in observance of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death — will feature a First Folio of Shakespeare open to the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet and, unique to Tulane’s version of the exhibition, a rare quarto of Hamlet on loan from Tulane parent and bibliophile, Stuart Rose. Printed in the large “folio” size, the First Folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. It was assembled after Shakespeare’s death in 1616 by two of his fellow actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, and was published in 1623. The First Folio is the only source for eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays, among these some of his best known and most popular, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and As You Like It, all of which might otherwise have been lost.