New resources, old plays: expanding A Digital Anthology of Early Modern Drama

May 4, 2017 | By Elizabeth Williamson and Meaghan J. Brown

The Folger’s Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama (EMED) is delighted to announce the release of twenty early modern plays, freely available to read and download. EMED offers you the chance to explore the vibrant scene of professional theater in early modern London, from a swash-buckling maid to ghastly—but creative—revenge. We offer a variety of plays, from Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Thomas Middleton’s Changeling, which have had a spate of recent productions, to the less well known—sometimes the much less well known.… Continue Reading

Okay, but what does it mean, or how do you regularize an early modern transcription?

May 2, 2017 | By Paul Dingman

As one reader guessed, the phrase shown in last week’s Crocodile mystery image is in secretary hand, i.e., a type of handwritten script widely used in the British Isles (and elsewhere in Europe) during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As transcribed in Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) from the upper right corner of a manuscript certificate, the phrase is “Est horse lee.” Ah, of course!… Continue Reading

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: May 2017

April 25, 2017 | By The Collation

For the Crocodile Mystery this month, peer into the handwriting of this manuscript and let us know what word or words you see and/or what they mean. Leave your thoughts and guesses as a reply in the Comments section. Check back next week for the answer.… Continue Reading

Announcement: 2017-2018 Long-Term Fellows

April 18, 2017 | By Amanda Herbert

The Folger Institute is pleased to announce our 2017-18 cohort of Long-Term Fellows. This year we will welcome seven long-term scholars to the Folger: James Bromley, Urvashi Chakravarty, Surekha Davies, Nicholas Popper, Nigel Smith, Julianne Werlin, and Jessica Wolfe. The Folger Institute awards two fellowships via the National Endowment for the Humanities and its Grants for Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions (FPIRI).… Continue Reading

New Vault Material Walks Into a Library…

April 11, 2017 | By Erin Blake

New staff members (and researchers!) are sometimes surprised to find that on-order and newly received collection materials show up in Hamnet searches. Many special collections libraries keep that information staff-only until the material has arrived, been processed, and sent to the vault. But it doesn’t feel right to us to hide information that might be useful to researchers. Even if you can’t see an item right now because it was only ordered yesterday, you at least know that it exists, and is on its way.… Continue Reading

left: detail of woodcut, right: same detail of print

Pietro Mattioli and the Everlasting Woodblocks

April 4, 2017 | By Abbie Weinberg

Yes, last week’s Crocodile Mystery was a close-up image of a woodblock. This woodblock, in particular: And in fact, it is the woodblock that was used to print this image: You can compare this section of the woodblock with the (hand-colored) print that it created: So what’s going on here? What is this book and why is the woodblock used for one of the illustrations still with it?… Continue Reading