The Collation

Research and Exploration at the Folger

News, News, News

November 14, 2017 | By Abbie Weinberg

How do you get your news today? TV? Radio? Printed newspapers? Online news sites? Social media? Today we seem to be inundated by the news 24/7 and it sometimes takes a conscious effort to step away from the barrage. News consumption habits have changed drastically in the last twenty years. But while the speed at which news reaches us may be at unprecedented levels, the multiplicity of delivery methods for the news is nothing—ahem—new.… Continue Reading

Time writing

November 7, 2017 | By Deborah J. Leslie

Chronograms—literally, “time writing”—are dates embedded within text. As such, they are a form of hidden writing called steganography: the encoded characters maintain their own value, but are hidden within a larger text. Easily calculable to those who know what they’re looking for, they still excite the thrill of uncovering secret meaning. That thrill was experienced by this cataloger when, for the first time ever, she came across a chronogram that had been previously unremarked.… Continue Reading
Miranda illustrated by Robert Anning Bell

Enter Miranda: the Folger’s new digital platform

November 2, 2017 | By Meaghan J. Brown

“Admired Miranda! Indeed the top of admiration, worth What’s dearest to the world!” William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (3.1.47-50) The Folger Shakespeare Library is thrilled to announce the launch of the prototype for Miranda, our new digital platform. Over the next two years, Miranda will become the home for our digital collections, from book records to transcriptions, images, sound files, podcasts, videos, and datasets.… Continue Reading
Image of stocks

Early modern legal violence: for the common good?

October 26, 2017 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Dr. Sarah Higinbotham In a 1628 sermon preached before the Assize court at Oxford, Robert Harris reminds the “Sheriffes, Iustices, [and] Iudges” that they have taken “an oath for the common good.” He reminds them that they work for the people, not for power: they are to “plucke the spoile out of the teeth of the mighty” “and to bestride [their] poore brother, when hee is stricken downe.” But even the most cursory Hamnet searches of “justice” reveal the law’s violence against the poor, in particular.… Continue Reading

Lost at Sea

October 24, 2017 | By Elizabeth DeBold

Shakespeare liked shipwrecks, including one in at least five of his plays. Sea storms and shipwrecks were a convenient way to separate characters or bring them into conflict, as well as stranding them in a strange place. In the “Age of Exploration,” sea voyages became enticingly more possible over time, in spite of the dangers. But although Shakespeare himself never sailed to new lands, his printed words have circled the globe.… Continue Reading