Shakespeare collection coming to the DIA

Shakespeare’s coming to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The DIA will exhibit a rare copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the collection of his plays published seven years after his death.

The show, “First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare,” will be on display March 7 - April 3.

Organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association, the traveling exhibition — which will hit all 50 states — honors the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

The museum will host the show in collaboration with Wayne State University, which is sponsoring an academic conference and gala event, as well as the Detroit Public Library, which will exhibit second and fourth folio editions from their collection.

There are 233 known copies of the First Folio, which had a print run of 750 in 1623. The Folger Library in Washington, D.C., owns 82 of them.

The First Folio includes heavyweights like “Macbeth, “Twelfth Night” and “The Comedy of Errors.”

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