This spring marks the 400th anniversary of the death of British playwright William Shakespeare. His plays have had a major influence on the world’s literature and drama. That influence is shown in a new exhibit at Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon, about 160 kilometers from London. People all around the world still read his plays. His works have been translated into hundreds of languages. Georgianna Ziegler organized the exhibit at the library. She explained that immigrants to America brought Shakespeare’s writings with them to their new home. One of the pieces in the exhibit is a list of the books one immigrant brought with him. “He came over to this country around 1650 and he brought with him a copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio and that is one of the earliest references to a Shakespeare edition actually coming into the New World. People had Shakespeare in their houses when they crossed the country as they moved West with the Gold Rush and so on. They often had a copy of the Bible and of Shakespeare.”
