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The Collation

The Collation

Research and Exploration at the Folger

The Collation is a gathering of useful information and observations from Folger staff and researchers. Read more about this blog

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

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The Collation

For December’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what’s happening in the images below. Leave your guess in the comments and we’ll be back next week with the answer!  

Collecting the world in seventeenth-century London
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Collecting the world in seventeenth-century London

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Surekha Davies 

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…

Theatrical disturbances and actors behaving badly: what the Drury Lane Prompter’s Journal tells us about nineteenth-century theatrical life
Poison as reason for missing rehearsal
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Theatrical disturbances and actors behaving badly: what the Drury Lane Prompter’s Journal tells us about nineteenth-century theatrical life

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Sarah Burdett

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…

News, News, News
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News, News, News

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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…

Time writing
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Time writing

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Deborah J. Leslie

Telescopium Uranicum, 1666. Folger 269- 460q item 5 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.…

Enter Miranda: the Folger's new digital platform
Miranda illustrated by Robert Anning Bell
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Enter Miranda: the Folger's new digital platform

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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) Miranda’s home page offers a chance to search by format, genre, date ranges, or language. The Folger Shakespeare Library is thrilled to…

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

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Author
The Collation

For November’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what’s going on in the image below. Leave your guess in the comments and we’ll be back next week with the answer!

Early modern legal violence: for the common good?
Image of stocks
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Early modern legal violence: for the common good?

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Sarah Higinbotham

A guest post by Dr. Sarah Higinbotham In a 1628 sermon preached before the Assize court at Oxford, Robert Harris reminds the “Sheriffes, Iustices, Iudges” that they have taken “an oath for the common good.” He reminds them that they…

Lost at Sea
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Lost at Sea

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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…

Report from the field: network analysis
Max Schich presenting at the EMDA institute
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Report from the field: network analysis

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Ruth Ahnert

A guest post by Dr. Ruth Ahnert In July 2017 the Folger Institute welcomed participants and faculty to the third of its Early Modern Digital Agendas (EMDA) gatherings—an NEH-funded Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities. The EMDA institutes…

Dryden's Virgil, Ogilby's Virgil, and Aeneas's nose job
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Dryden's Virgil, Ogilby's Virgil, and Aeneas's nose job

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Erin Blake

First, a confession: this month’s Crocodile Mystery was originally going to pose a question along the lines of “What’s weird about this image?” or “What makes this picture especially interesting?” but I gave up. I couldn’t figure out how to…

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

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Author
The Collation

This month’s Crocodile Mystery is a caption contest: Option A: Provide a factually accurate title for this portrait. Option B: Provide an amusingly inaccurate title for this portrait. Option C: Provide both A and B.

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