On the evening of June 18, 1962, the path-breaking force of nature behind the New York Shakespeare Festival finally, as always, got what he wanted.

Joseph Pap has come to the end of a long road. He wanted a home for the presentation of Shakespeare plays.

That's the president of the New York City Council, Newbold Morris,

speaking at the opening of the Delacourt Theater in Central Park.

And here it is, Joe.

Make yourself to home.

Joe Papp.

Eight years of scraping and fighting against poverty, against

bureaucrats, against the Red Scare, to perform Shakespeare, for free for the people of New York.

You could say it was a dream come true for Joe Papp. But if you actually actually asked Joe Pap, he'd say that was wrong.

Well, people say that, you know, and I've never been a dreamer.

I've never really dreamed about things.

I just did things on a day-to-day basis and had certain things I wanted to achieve.

And it's never been a dream.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

In 2009, Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan published an epic oral history of the early years of the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater that he titled, Free for All, Joe Papp, the public and the greatest theater story ever told. To create that book, he spent untold hours with Joe Papp and also talked

with New York politicians, Broadway producers, and seemingly everyone else who helped Papp make

Shakespeare in the park a reality, including performers like James Earl Jones, George C. Scott, Merrill Streep, Kevin Klein, Colleen,

Colleen Doohurst, Tommy Lee Jones, and a Staten Island carwash employee who would go on to play Romeo under the stage name of Martin Sheen.

Their stories are woven together into a thrilling record of one of the 20th century's most important monuments to Shakespeare.

We invited Kenneth Turan to come into the studio recently to talk about what he learned,

focusing mostly on Papp's early years, which are now largely lost to history.

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