Book collecting is a passion, or as Nicholas Basbanes famously called it, “a gentle madness,” that affects no few people. Henry and Emily Folger were two such bibliophiles, amassing the largest private collection of Shakespeareana in the world. This collection now forms the core of the Folger Shakespeare Library, which as an institution gives shape to their larger vision of making the study, appreciation, and enjoyment of Shakespeare’s works available to all.… Continue Reading
a guest post by Stephen Grant
Printed on picture side:
W7. THE FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D.C. H. H. Rideout.
Printed on address side:
The Folger Shakespeare Library, an important addition to the culture of the nation was the gift of the late Henry C. Folger. The collection includes more than 70,000 volumes, as well as pictures and other relics of the famous poet’s life and work.… Continue Reading
Thanks to everyone who registered a guess for this month’s Crocodile Mystery and congratulations to those of you who answered correctly! As many of you pointed out, the oddity in the final disposition of characters is Macbeth’s full-bodied presence on the stage—usually we just see his head, held aloft by Macduff! Read on for the gory details…
A while ago, I wrote about the stinky ingredients used to create the effect of the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth.… Continue Reading
Psssst…. we’re working on a new online catalog for the Folger collection. Do you want to help out by having an early look? If so, please keep reading! The link is deliberately buried deep in this blog post because there’s some context we want you to have, and some important warnings about the parts that we’re still working on.… Continue Reading
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Crocodile Mystery for May. This month, take a moment to examine this image from a 19th century printed text of Macbeth published as a promptbook for performance. What is odd about the disposition of characters in the book’s suggestion for the play’s final staging? Lock in your guesses in the comments below. See you next week for the big reveal!… Continue Reading
a guest post by Daniel Davies
I defended my Ph.D. dissertation on April 3, 2020. The defense happened on Zoom, which has become standard academic operating procedure by now but at the time felt like an extreme oddity. ‘Zoom is a really easy-to-use program and is more reliable, and flexible, than Skype,’ I wrote to my advisor on March 12, without any sense of how this program would come to define our lives.… Continue Reading
