In our age of Kindles and Google Books and endless hours staring at computer screens, it’s easy to get a little nostalgic for a good, old-fashioned book.  In The Book of William: How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World, Paul Collins reminds us how pleasurable it can be to leaf through someone’s old book, especially if that old book happens to be one of the most famous in the world.  Collins shares his travels around the world to see as many existing copies of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays as he can.  Along the way, he imaginatively takes us back to the printshop where it all began, and then through the twists of history that transformed the First Folio from a useless, outdated copy of the plays to one of the most valuable books in the world.  With Collins, we visit the Folger Library in Washington, DC, Southeby’s Auction House in London, and Meisei University in Japan.

Collins’ scholarship is the kind that I admire most.  By closely following the historical record and examining the physical remnants of the folios, he actually brings something fresh and new to the study of Shakespeare.  In addition, he writes for a wide audience, leaving all his references to a single, detailed endnote.  His descriptions of his own travels lead into history in vivid and palpable way.  My favorite passage was his analysis of Samuel Johnson’s volume of the First Folio (remember him?  He’s the guy who wrote the first dictionary):

There are greasy fingerprints on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an unidentifiable smear across the second act of A Merchant of Venice, and a crescent-shaped ring across the front of Measure for Measure that is so clearly from a tea saucer that it should be a permanent exhibit in the Doctor Johnson Gallery of Bad Housekeeping.

And I’m pretty sure that Samuel had a taste for gravy.

But here’s what he did not have a taste for: histories.  Johnson claimed that there were only really two kinds of Shakespeare plays — comedies and tragedies.  He meant that the histories could be divided among the others; and yet, he clearly had less interest in the history plays themselves.  His regard is tangible, for as I get further into the Folio and into the histories — past the strange sprinklings of the closing pages of Twelfth Night — the paper gets noticeably cleaner.  Whiter.

There’s something poignant about Collins’ discovery.  It’s how the objects that we leave behind can tell our stories.  While much of the book does emphasize how important the physical artifacts are, Collins also embraces new technologies that will allow any of us to view the folios the comfort of our living rooms.  He ends his travels at Meisei University in Japan.  There is the Meisei Folio, unique because of its incredible annotations, written in the 1620s and 1630s.  It’s the only copy that has such extensive notes written by someone who was alive when the Folio was published.  And the coolest thing?  Now anyone can see the Folio at the Meisei University Shakespeare Collection Database.   In fact, I just spent a few minutes reading through the annotations for the first scene in Hamlet. There’s something magical about what Collins was able to do: hold this very copy in his hands.  However, it’s also pretty magical that I could see those pages while drinking coffee in my little house in Ohio.

If you’ve got a few extra minutes, take a look at the First Folio today.  If you’ve got a few extra hours, read Collins.  You’ll be glad that you did!