The tomes originally sold for 15 shillings each, equal to about $200 now. Without it, 18 of the Bard’s plays - including such favorites as “Macbeth” and “The Taming of the Shrew” - would have been lost to history, she notes. “It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the First Folio,” says UC Irvine Shakespeare scholar Julia Lupton, distinguished professor of English. Published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, it’s one of 235 known copies still in existence. Hanratty’s multimillion dollar career detour enabled him to begin collecting rare books, capped by the 900-page First Folio now at UC Irvine. So, instead of arias, he turned to arithmetic and computers, and struck it rich as the father of computer-aided design and manufacturing, aka CAD/CAM. But while serving in the Korean War as a gunner in the Air Force, he was in a B-29 bomber crash that left his lungs and vocal cords scarred by chemical fumes. A longtime Bard fan whose parents worked on Shakespeare productions at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, Hanratty originally planned to be a professional opera singer.

In media interviews, Hanratty - who died in 2019 - explained the twists of fate that led to the gift.

Normally locked in a vault, UC Irvine’s folio - a first-edition book of Shakespeare’s plays - was donated to the campus in 1986 by alumnus Patrick Hanratty, a computer scientist, inventor and entrepreneur who paid $241,000 for the volume in 1983. This 1604 anatomy book represents the growing knowledge of the human body during Shakespeare’s time.

Lamb's tales from shakespeare