The Collation

Research and Exploration at the Folger

Collecting the world in seventeenth-century London

November 21, 2017 | By Guest Author

Guest post by Surekha Davies  From at least the sixteenth century, overseas artifacts found their way into European princely and scholarly collections. There they were catalogued, analyzed, and displayed alongside natural and artificial curiosities from classical cameos to blowfish. I am currently at the Folger Shakespeare Library working on a new book project, Collecting Artifacts in the Age of Empire, and thinking through the ways in which collections and collecting practices shaped early modern European attempts to understand human variety around the world.… Continue Reading
Poison as reason for missing rehearsal

Theatrical disturbances and actors behaving badly: what the Drury Lane Prompter’s Journal tells us about nineteenth-century theatrical life

November 16, 2017 | By Guest Author

Guest post by Dr. Sarah Burdett What was life like inside the nineteenth-century London theatre? How smoothly did performances run? And how professionally did actors behave? The Drury Lane Prompter’s Journal, 1812-1818, held at the Folger, provides an excellent resource for answering each of these questions. From performances being pulled last minute, to drunkenness during rehearsals, and actresses being shot at on stage, the document is full of juicy and shocking anecdotes which provide fascinating insight into the day-to-day caprices of Georgian theatrical life.… Continue Reading

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