Shakespeare Documented, coming soon

December 23, 2015 | By Heather Wolfe

It is almost 2016! For the Folger Shakespeare Library, that means we are about to kick off The Wonder of Will, 400 Years of Shakespeare, and one of the first initiatives we have planned as part of our year-long commemoration is Shakespeare Documented. When it launches in mid-January, it will be the largest and most authoritative resource for learning about primary sources that document the life and career of William Shakespeare.… Continue Reading

EMMO announces the launch of Shakespeare’s World

December 15, 2015 | By Sarah Powell and Paul Dingman

There are thousands of manuscripts sitting quietly amongst the Folger’s ever-growing collection which Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) aims to transcribe. Earlier this year EMMO collaborated with Zooniverse, a hugely successful online crowd-sourcing platform, so that people all over the world could join us in this transcription project. We are delighted to announce that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has since jumped aboard this digital enterprise as well, and on December 10th Shakespeare’s World officially launched!… Continue Reading

The Secret History (of a publication)

December 8, 2015 | By Abbie Weinberg

Yes. As our readers quickly reported, this month’s mystery image is the imprint on Procopius’s The secret history of the court of the Emperor Justinian. In fact, it is the imprint of the very first English translation of Procopius’s Secret work. The history behind the Secret History is a tale in and of itself. Procopius of Cesarea was a legal advisor (and chronicler) associated with the Roman Emperor Justinian’s court in the middle of the 6th century.… Continue Reading

“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

Manuscript leaf showing a drawing of a medieval stage.

What to do about the Macro manuscripts?

October 20, 2015 | By Kathleen Lynch

We thought we had the right question. Renate Mesmer (Head of Conservation), Heather Wolfe (Curator of Manuscripts), and I invited several scholars to the Folger for a lab-based discussion on “V.a.354: What to do about the Macro Manuscripts?” Specifically, the question was whether to rebind the items, and if so, together or separately, and if together, in what order. Some history will be helpful here: three late-medieval morality plays, Wisdom, Mankind, and The Castle of Perseverance, known collectively as the Macro manuscripts, are in the Folger collection.… Continue Reading