Overview: As part of the Shakespeare in Washington Festival, which ran from January through June 2007, the National Gallery of Art Library put on an exhibition of books that were known to be sources used by William Shakespeare in writing his plays. From classical works, like Livy’s Roman histories and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, to modern European literature and books on courtly manners, like Castiglione’s The Courtier, Shakespeare relied on a wide variety of source material to inform his own writing.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art. Neal Turtell, executive librarian, was curator.