New York

A group of actors and supporters sought permission to erect a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park, and began raising funds. The statue was unveiled in 1872, accompanied by a large number of Shakespeare productions in German that season at New York’s Altes Stadttheater, and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s tribute to Shakespeare in a speech given at the Saturday Club which is thought, years later, to have inspired Henry Clay Folger’s lifelong interest in Shakespeare.