Shakespeare works are recovered

A stolen volume of William Shakespeare’s collected plays, published in 1623 and worth about $2.5 million, has been recovered following antiquarian detective work by experts at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington -- where a mysterious man presented the precious book several weeks ago.

Police in Durham, in northeast England, on Friday were questioning a 51-year-old man in connection with the case after an international search for suspects.

The book, known as Shakespeare’s First Folio -- the first published collection of the bard’s plays seven years after his death -- was stolen from Durham University in 1998.

The break in the case came June 16 when a man with a British accent arrived without an appointment at the Folger library on Capitol Hill. He had an old book and a strange story to go with it: He said the work was from a family library in Cuba, and he was representing the family. He wanted the experts at Folger to tell him if it was a genuine and important volume by Shakespeare.

Librarian Richard Kuhta saw the man and examined the book. Recognizing it as something important, Kuhta asked the man if the library could hold on to the volume for further study, and the man agreed. That soon led to the FBI being called in.