![]() ![]() Part of that recent exhibit - Fame, Fortune, and Theft - can be viewed online. ![]() This fact was relatively recently on display at the one institution most identified with the Shakespeare folio - the Folger Shakespeare Library, which owns more folios than any other library, thanks to the dogged determination of Henry Folger. And it is the object which embodies and has been invested with the cultural value we now attribute to Shakespeare. It is (I will admit) a very important book, a landmark in the history of Shakespeare, and more broadly in the history of those concepts we now call Authorship and Literature. Or perhaps its just boredom, since I'm primarily a Shakespeare-oriented book historian, and especially for folks not in my particular sub-field, the folio is the most well-known object of study. Shakespeare circulated in a multitude of forms during and long after the seventeenth century, and the pervasive emphasis on the folio often causes us to ignore those other (and to me more interesting) forms. I've said it before, many times and in many different places, but the centrality of the Shakespeare folio to Shakespeare-oriented book studies tends to make me bristle with frustration. As you might guess, I think the Shakespeare folio is ripe for a bit of iconoclasm (if not, exactly, vandalism). I was reminded of that gratifying episode recently as I wrote up a paper for a panel at the Society for Textual Scholarship conference called "Downsizing Shakespeare" - a panel that aimed to put the Shakespeare folio back in its place (or, more generously, to determine exactly what that place is and how it has been defined over the years). That is, it asks two central questions: what is (our idea of) Shakespeare? And what, exactly, is a book? That moment of minor vandalism took the folio down a few notches, at least for my students, for a few reasons: 1) it's not even a copy of the First Folio, it's "just" a Second Folio 2) part of the preliminary matter, including the title-page, are later facsimiles inserted to make up a complete copy and 3) it showed, with great immediacy, that a folio-any Shakespeare folio, and by extension any important symbol of literary or cultural value-is a material object made up of many different physical elements, a fact which calls into question not only its status as a literary icon, but as an actual bounded and complete book. (Except maybe the bible and I'm not exaggerating as much as you might think). Making Shakespeare: The First Folio tells the story of Shakespeare’s fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell’s enterprise to create the book including the struggle to secure the finance, their difficulty tracing the scripts, the dilemma of choosing between versions of the published plays available, and the challenge of printing the 900-page volume with all the complexities and inadequacies of 17th century printing techniques.Remember when my students broke Shakespeare? If you recall, during a class session in special collections, my students broke off the front board of the binding of our most important Shakespeare book, a copy of the Second Folio (1632), a moment which I reveled in, since it allowed me to teach a few valuable lessons about the Shakespeare folio-which is commonly called the most important book ever in the history of the English language ever and even the most important book ever in the whole entire history of the world ever. As Professor Jonathan Bate explains: “The First Folio is the most important secular book in the history of the Western World.” Produced seven years after Shakespeare’s death, it preserved the other half of the Bard’s works including beloved plays like “The Tempest,” “Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night” and “Macbeth” which would have otherwise been lost to time. With only half of Shakespeare’s plays published before his death, often in inaccurate and incomplete versions, the First Folio is the first published collection of William Shakespeare’s full plays. Watch Great Performances Friday, November 17 at 9pm on WITF TV and the PBS or WITF app ! PNC C-Speak: The Language of Executives. ![]() Now, it’s time to find better ways to interact with you and ensure we meet your high standards of what a credible media organization should be. The days of journalism’s one-way street of simply producing stories for the public have long been over. ![]()
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