Andrea Mays' The
Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obssessive Hunt for
Shakespeare's First Folio
(Simon & Schuster, 2015, 368 pages, $27.00/12.99) takes what
could be a plodding and pedestrian account of an American millionaire
industrialist's quest to purchase and hoard every available period
piece relating to Shakespeare, with special emphasis on assembling
First Folios, turns out to be a stunning page turner. Henry Clay
Folger emerges as a gentle, ethical, thoughtful friend, husband,
colleague and mentor while amassing the largest privately held
Shakespeare collection in the world. Born in 1857 to a middle class
family with limited resources, Folger inspired enough friendship and
confidence from wealthy friends that they advanced him money to
attend Amherst College and later urged John D. Rockefeller to hire
him soon after he completed law school at Columbia. By the time
Folger died in 1932, he had amassed the largest private collection of
Shakespeariana in the world and was well on his way to completing
construction of the Folger Shakespeare Library on some of the most
coveted real estate in Washington, D.C. The book reads like a
fast-paced adventure novel in the real world of competitive
collecting and the growth of mammoth American corporations during
America's Golden Age.
Folger, as both a
business man and a collector, was noted for his discretion, his
intelligence, persistence, and thoroughness. He rose through the
Standard Oil ranks, becoming an intimate friend of John D.
Rockefeller, who trusted him implicitly, relying on his careful
analysis and thorough knowledge of the petroleum industry at every
level for data-based information and decision-making. During the
period of Standard Oil's breakup after the successful muck-raking
campaign of Ida Tarbell, Folger was a key person in advising and
working with Rockefeller to divide the corporation into, at least
seemingly, independent corporations. He rose to become president and
later chairman of the board of Standard Oil of New York. During most
of his career, he and his wife Emily lived in rented housing, using
their resources to amass their huge collection of Shakespeare related
books, manuscripts, letters, paintings, sculpture, and other
artifacts of the Shakespearean age. He bought his first First Folio,
the definitive possession for Shakespeare collectors. By the time he
died, Folger had accumulated eight-two of Shakespeare's First Folios,
of which about 800 were initially printed in 1623, while only 233
known copies exist today.
Mays' account
begins with a brief view of Shakespeare's life and career. Since not
a single scrap of paper exists in Shakespeare's own hand and there's
almost no contemporaneous writing about the man himself, he remains
largely a mystery. All we know of Shakespeare is what we find in the
church register in his home of Stratford On Avon and his will. As a
man of the theater, in his day seen as a less than legitimate
calling, Shakespeare was little known beyond his plays. She then goes
into some detail regarding the work that fellow actors John Heminges
and Henry Condell did to compile the texts garnered from working
scripts, actors' memories, and prompt books into full texts for each
of thirty-six plays. None of the original working scripts for
presenting the plays is known to survive. She also describes in
detail the printing and binding process used by printers William and
Isaac Jaggard. The publishing history of authorized and pirated early
editions is dealt with at an engaging level of detail. Rarely during
this book does Andrea Mays get lost in the weeds of detail, with the
possible exception of the acquisitions of several lesser First Folios
by Folger.
The First Folio
The main focus of
the book lies where it should, with Folger himself, along with his
wife Emily, who emerges as his partner in every phase of his
collecting efforts. Folger was a complex, nuanced man who functioned
well under pressure. He maintained a calm, and calming, demeanor
throughout his business career. As a collector of Shakespeariana,
however, he was given to acquisitive passions which were often at war
with his miserly instincts, hoarding, and obsessive desire to
maintain his privacy. These warring instincts led to his thoroughness
and to the quality of his collection. Somehow, along the way, he
managed to become a fine golfer, too.
Andrea Mays
Andrea E. Mays has degrees in economics
from the State University of New York at Binghamton and from UCLA,
and teaches economics at California State University at Long Beach.
Like Henry Folger, she is a native New Yorker and has had a lifelong
Shakespeare obsession. She spent much of her Manhattan girlhood in
the New York Public Library listening to vinyl LP recordings of
performances by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. (Publisher Profile)
Andrea Mays' The
Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obssessive Hunt for
Shakespeare's First Folio (Simon
& Shuster, 2015, 368 pages, $27.00/12.99) provides a detailed yet
thoroughly readable account of Henry Folger's manic obsession to
collect the world of Shakespeare in all its glorious variety and,
finally, to present it to the nation and the world in a format that
would preserve for all time the Bard's greatness and supply lifetimes
of scholars with grist for further study in a suitably dignified,
even worshipful, institution the bears his name. The book has an
extensive bibliography and many suggestions for further reading at
various levels of depth depending upon the reader. The
Millionaire and the Bard is not
a Shakespearean specialist's book, nor is it quite a biography.
Rather, it's an intriguing and detailed account of an able and
ultimately admirable, though somewhat flawed, man who managed his
obsession in such a way as to provide a great gift to the world. The
book was provided to me as an electronic galley by the publisher
through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle app.
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