--- title: Someone Discovered a Shakespeare Folio in a Small Library in France description: Librarians in northern France made a surprise discovery this fall canonical: https://time.com/3607230/new-shakespeare-folio-discovery-france/ author: Sam Frizell article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-26T13:56:42.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:22.745Z og:title: Someone Discovered a Shakespeare Folio in a Small Library in France og:description: Librarians in northern France made a surprise discovery this fall og:url: https://time.com/3607230/new-shakespeare-folio-discovery-france/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb3687f356f76e551/69876b322dce0142c69dc0a9/shakespeare.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Shakespeare og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Someone Discovered a Shakespeare Folio in a Small Library in France twitter:description: Librarians in northern France made a surprise discovery this fall twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb3687f356f76e551/69876b322dce0142c69dc0a9/shakespeare.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Someone Discovered a Shakespeare Folio in a Small Library in France > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Nov 26, 2014 1:56 PM UTC  Remy Cordonnier, librarian in the northern town of Saint-Omer, near Calais carefully shows an example of a valuable Shakespeare "First Folio", a collection of some of his plays, dating from 1623. Remy Cordonnier, librarian in the northern town of Saint-Omer, near Calais carefully shows an example of a valuable Shakespeare "First Folio", a collection of some of his plays, dating from 1623. Denis Charlet—AFP/Getty Images by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Nov 26, 2014 1:56 PM UTC A previously undiscovered Shakespeare folio has surfaced in northern France, a finding that could shed new light on the playwright’s intentions and early readership. The book, whose title page and introductory material were worn off, was discovered by librarians at a public library in St.-Omer near Calais, reports the [New York _Times_](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/arts/shakespeare-folio-discovered-in-france-.html). It is one of only 233 known surviving first folios by the Bard. “First folios don’t turn up very often, and when they do, it’s usually a really chewed up, uninteresting copy. But this one is magnificent,” Eric Rasmussen, an American Shakespeare expert, told the _Times._ Rasmussen was summoned to France over the weekendby the St.-Omer library’s director of medieval and early modern collections, Rémy Cordonnier, to confirm the volume’s authenticity. The newly discovered folio was inherited from a long-defunct Jesuit college and could refuel the debate over whether the _Hamlet_ scribe was secretly Catholic. The newly-discovered volume also contains handwritten notes that may illuminate how the plays were formed in Shakespeare’s time. Printed in a batch of 800 copies in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, the first folios are considered the only reliable text of half his plays, and they are intensely scrutinized by scholars for minute differences and corrections made by print shops that can reveal the playwright’s intentions. In 2006, a first folio sold for $6.8 million at Christie’s. \[[New York _Times_\]](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/arts/shakespeare-folio-discovered-in-france-.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3607230/new-shakespeare-folio-discovery-france/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3607230/new-shakespeare-folio-discovery-france/"},"headline":"Someone Discovered a Shakespeare Folio in a Small Library in France","datePublished":"2014-11-26T13:56:42.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:56:22.745Z","description":"To be or not to be: That is not a question anymore for the newly authenticated literary discovery","url":"https://time.com/3607230/new-shakespeare-folio-discovery-france/","keywords":["Living","Books","Shakespeare"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb3687f356f76e551/69876b322dce0142c69dc0a9/shakespeare.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam Frizell","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb3687f356f76e551/69876b322dce0142c69dc0a9/shakespeare.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Shakespeare","caption":"Remy Cordonnier, librarian in the northern town of Saint-Omer, near Calais carefully shows an example of a valuable Shakespeare \"First Folio\", a collection of some of his plays, dating from 1623.","creditText":"Denis Charlet—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3607230/new-shakespeare-folio-discovery-france/","name":"Someone Discovered a Shakespeare Folio in a Small Library in France"}}]}] ```