The Shakespeare Thefts Read Online Free

had himself lived in Valladolid and collected a large library there. But his friend the librarian attached no importance to the book, and it was to go into the common holocaust with the rest. Gayangos noticed particularly, as he turned it over, that its margins were covered with notes in a seventeenth-century hand. 17
    Gayangos told Ward that he then continued his journey to England, where he “mentioned the incident” to the noted bibliophile (some would say bibliomaniac) Sir Thomas Phillipps and Sir Thomas’s future son-in-law, James Halliwell—afterward Halliwell-Phillipps.
    The excitement of both knew no bounds… . The very thought of such a treasure perishing barbarously in a bonfire of waste paper was enough to drive a bibliophile out of his wits. Gayangos was sent back to Spain post haste. But alack! He found a library swept and garnished; no trace of the volume he had once held there in his hand, and on the face of his friend the librarian only a frank and peevish wonder that anybody should tease him with questions about such a trifle. 18
    Along with the startling differences between the two accounts—was the priceless folio given to local textile merchants as a source of waste paper in which to wrap their wares, or was it burned to make room on the shelves for more important books in an aristocratic library?—there are more subtle inconsistencies that scholars, such as Anthony James West, believe may have been
intended
to mislead. 19
    To begin with, although Gayangos wrote to Madden that he “did not care much for books” and told Ward that “he knew nothing about Shakespeare bibliography,” at the time of his first visit to Valladolid in the mid-1830s, this was simply not true.
    He was, in fact, both a knowledgeable bibliographer and professional book dealer. In 1833, he served as Official of Interpretation of Foreign Languages for the Ministry of State, translating Arabic manuscripts, gathering material relating to the history and geography of Spain, classifying the index of Arab manuscripts at the National Library, and visiting the Escorial Library in search of further manuscripts. In 1836, he traveled to Toledo, where he visited libraries, and Burgos (about eight miles from Valladolid), where he bought books and negotiated the purchase of a library.
    Furthermore, there is conclusive evidence that Gayangos was a book thief—indeed, one of his biographers characterizes him as a “bibliopirate.” 20 In 1841,Bartolomé Jose Gallardo, director of the Biblioteca de Cortes, accused Gayangos of stealing from the National Library, claiming that he had taken (“extraídos”) Arabic manuscripts. 21 We also know that he stole
specifically
from the Gondomar collection. It is well documented that a Gondomar manuscript of the
Viaje de Turquía
was transferred to Charles IV’s library in 1806, but it somehow found its way into Gayangos’s personal library, where it was discovered after his death. 22
    If Gayangos stole the copy of the
Viaje de Turquía
, is it too great a leap to suggest that he also took the Gondomar First Folio and then fabricated its destruction? At least some First Folio hunters believe this to be the case. In 1876, the London
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art
ran this notice on its front page:
    Wanted from Spain the copy of the first folio of Shakespeare, bound in yellow silk, and full of corrections and notes in a contemporary hand, which Senor Gayangos saw when a young man in the library of a descendant of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador here at the time. 23
    Despite this plea, Gondomar’s copy of the Shakespeare First Folio has remained missing. Did Gayangos sell it on the sly? Was he hoarding it for himself? It wasn’t found in his personal library when he passed away in1897. Not a whisper was heard about it until June 16, 2008, when a fantasist showed up in Washington, DC, with a copy of a book he claimed was a First Folio from Galicia in Spain that he got