Thirsty Mr. Darcy fans will soon be blessed with seeing THAT shirt up close

LONDON -- The white shirt from Pride and Prejudice, which clung so gloriously to Colin Firth as he emerged from that lake and into our dreams, will soon be on display in America.

Giddy Jane Austen fans know exactly what shirt we are talking about. It will be shown at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., as part of its "Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity" exhibit, the library told Mashable.

The shirt has previously been in the care of British costume company Cosprop, which receives several requests a year for it, the New York Times reported.

Alongside it in the exhibition in August will be items like a Shakespeare bobblehead and a scarf of Jane Austen's family tree. The exhibit examines the parallels between the literary after-lives of Austen and Shakespeare.

In the legendary scene from the 2005 BBC miniseries adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy strips off to go for a swim, then emerges from the lake in that white shirt.

Elizabeth Bennet's face (played by Jennifer Ehle) is really all of us in this situation.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

As the New York Times dryly noted, the wet T-shirt scene does not appear in the novel. But it has lived on in pop culture infamy, from Bridget Jones to Benedict Cumberbatch.

There was apparently a jokey proposal to keep the shirt damp in its display case, but that was dismissed as being "curatorially unsound," said Janine Barchas, one of the curators of the show.

“We will be giving the Folger some Windex, to be used in what we anticipate will be a daily wiping-down of lipstick marks,” she said in a comment that is both funny and kind of gross.

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