“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?” December 2015

December 1, 2015 | By The Collation

It’s a new month and you know what that means! Mystery time! We’re sure this month’s mystery image won’t be hard for our intrepid and knowledgeable readers to track down. Ah, but finding out more than the title of the associated book? That’s where the real mystery begins… As always, comment here with your thoughts and observations of this image, and come back next week for a more detailed exploration of the subject at hand.… Continue Reading

Two film studios, alike in dignity…

November 24, 2015 | By Sarah Hovde

The Folger owns a variety of printed items related to the cinematic history of Shakespeare—screenplays and manuscript drafts, pressbooks and souvenir programs, and still photographs. Generally, there’s a good chance that we also have the related film recording in some form, but that’s certainly not a guarantee. And in some cases, no other libraries (or private collectors) hold the film recordings either.… Continue Reading

“Extravagantly Large Paper”

November 17, 2015 | By Caroline Duroselle-Melish

While working on the exhibition “Age of Lawyers” (currently on view at the Folger Shakespeare Library), I came upon several interesting copies of Thomas Littleton’s Tenures, the first textbook written on English land law. There are five different copies of Littleton’s book printed in London 1588 and 1591 by Richard Totell. The text in all of them lies in the inner top quadrant of each page, creating unusually wide margins on each side and below the text.… Continue Reading

detail of drawings, showing the foppishly dressed man

Doodles and Dragons

November 12, 2015 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Gail McMurray Gibson, William R. Kenan Professor Emerita of English and Humanities, Davidson College. When the Macro Plays manuscript pages recently came out of the Folger vault for a day of conversation with scholars, curators, and the conservation team, I got a good look at some doodles. Unlike the careful drawing on the final folio of the Macro play of The Castle of Perseverance, famously heralded as the earliest extant English stage design, the crude sketches on the first and last paper pages of the late-medieval masque-like play Wisdom haven’t received much attention.… Continue Reading

Welcome to The Collation’s new look

November 9, 2015 | By The Collation

The Folger’s blog renovations are done! The Collation now has a new look and a new tag line, but the same enthusiastic commitment to research and exploration at the Folger (which is now spelled out as such in the tag line). It’s not hugely different from what we had before: the colors are still red, white, and black; the title banner still stretches across the top; and the books on our shelf haven’t changed (though the image has been cropped differently).… Continue Reading

Please pardon the dust

October 27, 2015 | By The Collation

It is nearly the end of another month, so we’re sure most of you are expecting another intriguing Crocodile Mystery. However, this month we are going to be taking a very brief hiatus while we do some fall cleaning, and implement some updates on both the front and back end of this blog! But never fear, we expect to be back with our regularly scheduled posts sometime next week.… Continue Reading