An Effort to Put First Edition of Shakespeare Online

By ROBIN POGREBIN

A campaign is under way to digitize and make available online the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, known as the First Folio.

A cadre of celebrities â€" including the actors Vanessa Redgrave and Stephen Fry and the theater director Peter Hall â€" are championing the fundraising effort by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, “Sprint for Shakespeare,” which started this week. The campaign aims to raise £20,000 - about $31,000 - through private contributions.

Once online, the folio will be available free, accompanied by articles and blogs from academics, other specialists, theater professionals and the public.

While copies of the book are not uncommon, the Bodleian's First Folio is rare because it has not been rebound or restored in the almost four centuries since it was first received by the library late in 1623. Its marks reveal the tastes of early readers; the pages of “ Romeo and Juliet” are worn almost to shreds, while “King John” is virtually pristine. The volume, which left the library in the 1660's, was returned after the strong response to a public fund-raising campaign to buy it at the turn of the 20th century.

Oxford will be marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016.

“The Shakespeare First Folio is the most important secular book in the history of the western world,” said Jonathan Bate, a Shakespeare scholar at Oxford. “The digitization of the Bodleian copy, with its strange and eventful history, is a great project.”