Thief of Shakespeare Volume Jailed

A modern Shakespearean tragedy—literally—unfolded Monday when an unemployed book dealer was sentenced to eight years in prison. His crime: possession of a stolen first edition of Shakespeare’s plays, described as a “quintessentially English treasure” and valued at about $1.5 million. Raymond Scott took the 1623 book to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., two years ago and attempted to get it authenticated. The problem was that the rare volume originally came from Durham University in northern England, where it was stolen from a display case in 1998. Scott claimed he did not steal the book; instead, he said, he found it in Cuba. Judge Richard Lowden responded by saying that Scott had misused the book to “fund an extremely ludicrous playboy lifestyle.” The stolen copy, which was shown to the court for the first time in a decade, will be returned to Durham and will be put on display in January. Durham’s vice chancellor, Chris Higgins, described Scott’s act as “blatant cultural vandalism.”