Image via New York Times / Mount Stuart

Earlier this month it was announced that a rare First Folio of Shakespeare’s works was discovered at Mount Stuart on the Scottish Isle of Bute.

Initially historian Emma Smith, a professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, was skeptical of the discovery, especially in the year that marks the 400th anniversary of the great bard’s death.

Having had a chance to examine and authenticate the Bute Folio, which is bound in three separate volumes, Emma Smith told the BBC that “It’s a book we most likely now see … in a glass case, and one of the things that this copy … shows us is a time when people just really used this book, they enjoyed it, they scribbled on it, they spilt their wine on it, their pet cats jumped on it.”

The First Folio, which contains thirty six of Shakespeare’s plays, was published in 1623 and included several plays previously unpublished works, among them Macbeth, The Tempest and As You Like It.

Only 234 copies are known to exist and, while it is not for sale at the time, this copy is estimated to be worth $3.7 to $4.6 million.