Goodbye, Shakespeare

The world's No. 1 rare book dealer and one of its most avid collectors is Philadelphia's Dr. Abraham S. W. Rosenbach. Last week Rosenbach announced that he had sold his famous collection of Shakespeares--73 prized folios and quartos of plays and sonnets, many of them first editions in excellent condition. The buyer: Europe's outstanding collector, Dr. Martin Bodmer, Swiss banker and vice president of the International Red Cross. The price: something over $1,000,000.

No private collector in modern times has ever assembled a Shakespeare library* to compare with Dr. Rosenbach's. Beginning in 1907, when he bought his first First Folio for about $18,000, "Rosy" Rosenbach has taken everything that came in sight. He bought all four folios of the collected plays published between 1623 and 1685. He paid close to $75,000 for a splendid, mint-condition copy of the First Folio, and $21,000 for a first edition (1600) of Much Ado About Nothing. His Troilus and Cressida, dated 1609, is the only known uncut copy of any play published while Shakespeare was still alive. He picked up 68 of the 250 rare Shakespeare quartos known to be in existence, and one of the twelve first edition sonnets published in 1609.

Why did Collector Rosenbach sell his library to Europe instead of keeping it in the U.S.? Old (75) Dr. Rosenbach did not say. But John Fleming, his agent and vice president of his bookstore, blamed it on high taxes and the leveling off of great U.S. fortunes. Said Fleming: "Individuals here have lost the initiative to support our cultural institutions."

* The only non-private libraries that are as good: the British Museum, the Bodleian (Oxford), Trinity College (Cambridge), the Folger, Boston Public, Huntington (California), Harvard, Yale.

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