The Millionaire and the Bard by Andrea Mays

The net result of this book was to instill in me a desire to visit the Folger Library in Washington DC. Henry Folger was Rockefeller’s right-hand man at Standard Oil; Rockefeller as the richest man in the world and one of the richest humans who has ever lived. Folger had the money and power to indulge himself, and his chief indulgence was a burgeoning obsession with Shakespeare. After Shakespeare died, a group of his friends and fellow actors collected his work into a “First Folio” of plays. It’s unlikely that Shakespeare’s plays would persist to this day had it not…