In 1998 in Durham, England, a First Folio vanishes without a trace. A series of experts weigh in on how the folio vanished, and recount the story of how it was found.
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TRANSCRIPT
In 1998, on an ordinary winter afternoon in Durham, a First Folio that had been in the city for over 350 years was about to vanish.
Once belonging to their bishop, John Cousin, the soaring status and value of a folio had made it vulnerable.
It's the one copy of the First Folio that has been in the same ownership for all of its existence.
So losing it from the city and from his library was a real shock.
The book was an icon to the city and to its university students.
I went to consult it on the morning of my Shakespeare exam with two friends, and we spent some time with it and we were able to flick through it.
Fast forward three years: it's been stolen.
That book that I touched and looked at and felt close to was gone.
Without any trace of how it was taken, the investigation faltered.
Ten years later on the other side of the world, The Folger Library received an unexpected visitor, Raymond Scott.
This man in yachting costume arrived at the library, announced himself to the guards, and he produced in a box this mutilated copy of a book saying that it belonged to a Cuban family that he had and he was their representative, and they very much wanted the Folger Library to authenticate it.
When you have as many First Folios as we have, it is not difficult to compare a copy that comes in with any number of one of our First Folios to say, Yes, indeed, this is a First Folio.
Confident it was a First Folio, the Folger then put out a call to a rare books expert in New York.
Could I come down, professionally, and look at what purported to be a First Folio of Shakespeare?
And I said, Of course!
All expenses paid trip to Washington.
This was a a great opportunity.
I think I may have been told that the folio had come from Cuba and that it came in with a rather sort of strange fellow with a Geordie accent.
Yes, of course it was deeply suspicious.
The story now moves to Stratford-upon-Avon and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, where one time student Paul Edmondson now works Inside, is an early 20th century census compiled by Sidney Lee that records the unique defining features of every known folio, demonstrating that no two folios are the same.
We ask the same questions of everyone.
What are the measurements of the copy?
Does your copy show any discrepancies or particular markings?
And of course, what this allowed him to do was to have as much information as possible about each individual copy.
And of course, it includes the Durham copy, which was stolen.
Now in Washington, and with his suspicions aroused, Stephen had consulted an up to date copy of the census.
Within between five and 15 minutes at a large table in the Folger, one just did the measurements.
The measurements matched.
So the good news is that it's a first folio.
The bad news is it belongs to Durham University Library.
Well, what do you do at that point?
What do you do?
And I did two things.
The first thing was to call the FBI and say, I'm reporting a stolen Shakespeare First Folio.
And the second thing was to call the British Embassy.
