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First Folio found in France to visit Shakespeare’ Globe

British actor Mark Rylance, who was the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe theatre and plays Thomas Cromwell in the Wolf Hall television series currently airing in the UK, poses for photographers with the First Folio of Shakespeare plays recently discovered in Saint-Omer in France, at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London, Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. The edition, which will be exhibited at the Globe in 2016, the year of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares' death, is one of 230 copies of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio and is notable for its scribbled stage directions. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
British actor Mark Rylance, who was the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe theatre and plays Thomas Cromwell in the Wolf Hall television series currently airing in the UK, poses for photographers with the First Folio of Shakespeare plays recently discovered in Saint-Omer in France, at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London, Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. The edition, which will be exhibited at the Globe in 2016, the year of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares' death, is one of 230 copies of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio and is notable for its scribbled stage directions. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) British actor Mark Rylance, who was the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe theatre and plays Thomas Cromwell in the Wolf Hall television series currently airing in the UK, poses for photographers with the First Folio of Shakespeare plays recently discovered in Saint-Omer in France, at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London, Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. The edition, which will be exhibited at the Globe in 2016, the year of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares' death, is one of 230 copies of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio and is notable for its scribbled stage directions. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

By Associated Press 1 min read

LONDON (AP) – A rare first edition of William Shakespeare’s plays is to go on display in the Bard’s spiritual home, just a few hundred yards (meters) from where it was printed in 1623.

Shakespeare’s Globe says a First Folio discovered last year in a library in Saint-Omer, France, will be displayed at the London theater for two months from July 2016.

Actor Mark Rylance says he is delighted that “my favorite book in the world” is coming to the recreated Elizabethan playhouse. The theater lies across the River Thames from site of London’s 17th-century printing houses near St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Rylance, a former Globe artistic director who stars in BBC television series “Wolf Hall,” said Monday it was “magical” that the book would rest so close to where it was created.