Sir Patrick Stewart said he “got goosebumps” when he was allowed to hold a rare volume of Shakespeare’s plays at the Craven Museum in Skipton last week.

The Hollywood actor, who is well known for his Shakespearean performances, visited the town on Thursday to get his hands on the museum’s prize exhibit, which recently went on display for the first time.

Sir Patrick, first learned of the volume’s existence when asked if he would record an accompanying voiceover.

The acclaimed actor told the Herald he was shocked to learn that there was a copy of the Folio so close to his home in the Dales.

“It’s thrilling,” he said. “And I love telling people that we’ve got a First Folio just down the road.

“When I was first approached I was astonished and doubly astonished that I didn’t know about it.

“I was unaware that this part-volume of the Folio existed, and I didn’t know that it existed not far away from where I’ve been living for 20 years.

“I thought, well there’s the Folger [in Washington DC], there’s Stratford on Avon and there’s one in the British Museum I think... and now Skipton - isn’t that great? It’s a fantastic story.

“When the museum approached me about wanting to put on a special display and they wanted a narrator, I was delighted to be asked, because Shakespeare, of course, has played a huge part in my life. Without him I’d have been unemployed for a large part of my career.

“As a local person, a Yorkshireman, it just seemed absolutely the right thing to do.”

He saw the exhibit for the first time last Thursday and admitted: “I get goosebumps whenever I get close to a Folio. I had an experience two or three decades ago when the director of the Folger library in Washington DC took me down to the stacks.

“The Folger has more First Folios than any other library in the world. I think they have 80 and there they were lined up on metal shelves. That was breathtaking. Knowing that I’d played Titus Andronicus twice he took down the quarto of Titus Andronicus and said this will interest you.

“I was wearing gloves of course and as I turned the pages he said ‘it’s interesting, you know, this copy was found somewhere in Scandinavia and it’s really nice because we didn’t have one until then’ and I remember saying ‘you mean this is the only one’ – ‘yes, that’s Titus Andronicus, that’s the only one’. I’m sure for other people, holding a piece of Bach’s manuscript, or Wagner, would be just as exciting.”

Sir Patrick explained why the First Folio is so important. “The First Folio was the first complete edition of Shakespeare’s plays,” he said. “Everything that we know for certain he wrote is there.

“It was the first time that a writer’s exclusively dramatic works had ever been printed before, so it’s a very, very important volume from that point of view.

“Without the Folio, half of Shakespeare’s plays would be unknown. So, I would say, along with the King James Bible it’s the most important piece of publishing in this country.”

He added: “They were printed several years after his death and for me one of the charms of the Folio is that it was the dedication and work of two of the actors in his company, Heminges and Condell, the folio ever came into existence at all. They were the ones who were so passionate that all of the poet William Shakespeare’s dramatic works should be available that the things were published at all. Actors sometimes get a bad press but in this particular case I think we should have a lot to thank Heminges and Condell for.”

The Folio lay undiscovered for many years in the museum’s archives, and Sir Patrick said there was a chance more copies could be discovered.

“There are approximately 500 copies missing from the published list and we should all take that attic apart,” he said. “I’ve actually been doing that today, but everything that I had I know was mine, so it’s unlikely that I was going to turn up a first Folio. But it could be there. There could be one anywhere, just as there was one here in Skipton.

“They were significant volumes and one it’s a little surprising that such a small percentage of them still exist because it’s not that long ago that they were printed.”

During his visit to the museum, Sir Patrick was shown the orginial Craven Herald printing press and was presented with a facsimile of a page from the Folio, that had been reproduced using the old press.

In next week’s print edition: Sir Patrick on his love for the Craven Dales.