The Stolen Shakespeare

Imagine stealing the Mona Lisa, then taking it to one of the world's best museums and asking the experts there to authenticate it for you. Think you might get caught?

Last month, a British book thief seems to have done something only slightly less foolish--asking experts at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, to authenticate a stolen copy of Shakespeare's First Folio.

"Original" Shakespeare

First published in 1623, the First Folio was the original "collected works" of William Shakespeare. It contains 36 plays, 18 of which had been performed but never published before, including The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar. It is, without question, one of the most important books in the history of English literature.

Only about 230 copies of the First Folio still exist, and those in good condition are worth millions. Unfortunately for would-be thieves, they're also unique and identifiable. Thanks to inconsistencies in the 17th-century printing process, and to idiosyncrasies in the copies' histories, Shakespearean text experts know one First Folio from another.

Textual Violation

That didn't stop thieves from swiping a copy of the First Folio from a display at England's Durham University 10 years ago. The brazen book bandits actually made off with several other rare texts that day, too--including a 14th-century English New Testament and a fragment of a Geoffrey Chaucer poem.

Among Shakespeareans, the heist was widely talked about and deeply lamented, though experts were quick to point out that the "hot" Folio would be nearly impossible to sell to any legitimate buyer. After all, the people who know about such things would quickly recognize the book as stolen.

Maybe that's why the thieves apparently waited a decade to make their move. But if they hoped to find the right time to fence the Folio, they certainly picked the wrong place.

Is This for Real?

Last month, a British man strolled into the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. He didn't have an appointment, but he did have a copy of the First Folio, which he claimed to have purchased in Cuba. He said he wanted the Folger's experts to authenticate it for him.

The Folger is home to 79 of the world's extant copies of the First Folio, the largest collection anywhere. So, it's safe to say the folks there know a bit about Shakespearean texts. Immediately suspicious, they agreed to authenticate the book, as long as the man left it with them.

He did, and the Folger's experts soon confirmed that the text was the stolen Durham Folio. The Folger promptly notified the FBI, which notified the British Embassy. The man was later arrested by police back in England, not far from the site of the original heist.

The full story of the Durham Folio's 10-year sojourn remains to be told. It's not yet clear whether the man who brought the book to the Folger stole it himself all those years ago, or if the actual tale is more tangled. But at least now we know that it ends comically, not tragically. As for the attempt to pass off a stolen First Folio at the Folger, the thief might well say, in the Bard's own words, "O, I am fortune's fool!"