While drama students may have been prepping their auditions for this year’s spring play, William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” last Wednesday, AP Literature and Composition students, along with select Advanced English 10 class, traveled to the Beach Museum to view one of 233 existing copies of The 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare, which contains all of his known plays.

“Because this is Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary since his death, the Kansas State Beach Museum was able to become the one location in Kansas where the Folger Shakespeare Company would bring his folio so you could view it, and we wanted to take that opportunity,” Advanced English 10 teacher Joe Turner said.

For the anniversary, Folger Shakespeare Library curators from Washington D.C. traveled the 50 states, bringing one folio to each. In order for the Beach Museum to be chosen as the a temporary home for a book, the K-State English department wrote a 115-page proposal.

“It’s exciting that people care that much to do something like this and it seems like, you know, everybody is just very supportive of these types of artistic things, theatrical things which kind of brings much more culture and excitement to Manhattan,” Turner said.

Along with the folio, the company added modern Shakespeare-inspired items and other books printed in the same time period.

“I think starting with that book of all of his plays really kind of changed life in general,” sophomore Mady Trujillo said. “If that book wouldn’t have been published, then we wouldn’t have had any of the plays that we would have today, so I think that really reflects life in general.”

While Shakespeare might not be for everyone, according to Turner, the exhibit also catered to other interests.

“Those people who were in drama especially, who had had some experience with Shakespeare’s plays really did a nice job of asking some questions and getting involved, and I think for people that are interested in history, there was some things there for them,” Turner said. “Some people were interested in English, something was there for them, too. So it was kind of all around, it really touched on some of each student’s personal habits or personal hobbies and things they’d enjoyed.”

For some students, this rang true.

“I kind of liked seeing the manuscript; that was my favorite part because it’s a really unique book,” senior Mark Buckwalter said. “There aren’t many of them in the world, so that pretty cool.”