The Shakespeare Universe

The Shakespeare Universe  includes the 37 plays and 154 sonnets attributed to the author known as The Bard, as well as the countless derivative works that build on the familiarity of Shakespeare's plots, characters, poetic style and playful use of the English language.

The works by Shakespeare, inspired by Shakespeare, and about Shakespeare are extensive. Use this guide to explore some of the many Shakespeare-related resources available at The Public Library.

The First Folio Tour

See Shakespeare's First Folio in Santa Fe! More on the exhibition on the New Mexico Museum of Art's website.

Celebrate the First Folio's nationwide tour and 400 years of Shakespeare with these events at The Public Library:

Musica Antigua de Albuquerque
Elizabethan music performance
Main Library
February 6, 1 p.m.

Professor Marissa Greenberg presents
Shakespeare in Duke City
Main Library 
February 17, 5 p.m.

What is the First Folio? The Folger Shakespeare Library explains:

A folio is a large book in which printed sheets are folded in half only once, creating two double-sided leaves, or four pages. Folios were more expensive and far more prestigious than quartos. Seven years after Shakespeare's death, John Heminge and Henry Condell, his friends and colleagues in the King's Men, collected almost all of his plays in a folio edition. Shakespeare's friendly rival Ben Jonson had previously published his own writings, poems included, in a folio. The 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare, however, is the earliest folio consisting only of an author's plays.

The First Folio groups the plays for the first time into comedies, histories, and tragedies, and it includes the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, generally considered an authentic image because it was approved by those who knew him. More importantly, the First Folio preserved 18 of Shakespeare's plays that had never been printed before: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, 1 Henry VI, Henry VIII, Julius Caesar, King John, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Winter’s Tale.

In 2016, a copy of the The First Folio from the Folger Shakespeare Library will visit every state in the United States. The First Folio will be on display at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico Feb 5- 28. For all tour dates and information, see the Folger Library's First Folio Tour website.

Listen to a 30-minute KUNM program with Carlsbad-native Shakespeare scholar John F. Andrews, and Mary Kershaw, Director of the New Mexico Museum of Art, here.

Research Databases

The following research databases contain literature-related articles, book excerpts, author biographies, plot summaries and more which are useful for learning about the works of Shakespeare.