The main Shakespearean encounter for me this week was going to the Folger with Mariam
That’s saying a lot in a week when Taylor Swift came out with an Ophelia release.
I’m not a particular Swifty and though I appreciate her professionalism and the Shakespeare references, it turns out that her Ophelia video was only tertiary this week.
We went to our historical dance class on Thursday but worked on previous dances and I did sing again but of course, the songs will be the same until our concert.
The museum trip though, that was new and wonderful.
First things first, look at how wonderful and scholarly Mariam looks here. This is one of my favorite pictures I have taken all year.
The folios were our draw here. I read the Bryson and his chapter on the Folger Shakespeare Library reminded me that I had never been to this fantastic and nearby resource.
We saw so many first and second Folios!
Shakespeare did not write books, he did not publish books, and even though it was done in his day he didn’t even publish his poems.
Lots of his works were published contemporaneously but all of them were bootleg.
He was a playwright and he wrote scripts.
If, back in the day, you wanted to have your own version of a play (and you were rich) you got somebody who wrote quickly and had a good memory to go the the play and write it down for you. These writings were typically pretty error prone and sketchy.
They are know as quartos. “Quartos” because the cheapest way to get them printed up was folded into quarters, sort of like greeting cards all stacked together.
The things that we use as references are the Folios. A folio is folded in half and is pretty much how we do books now.
The first folio is the term for one of the most influential and important books in the English language.
After Shakespeare died some of his colleagues got together to publish a good version of his works. They were not random scribes, they were fellow actors and friends. They had been in the plays and read the scripts and they were sometimes using the foul papers (annotated drafts of the scripts) when they could for this project.
Sadly not all of his plays made it in but they gave us Shakespeare.
The Folger has 82 of the First Folios!
They also had a great replica to mess with. It was fabulous feeling the thickness of the pages and squinting down ant the ancient type. I flipped from play to play happy with nostalgia and anticipation for plays completed and plays to come.
It’s not a huge exhibition but I loved what I saw.
The walls were lined with illustrations from playbills, books, movies, and amateur projects. We saw kids projects from during Covid lockdown and a polished black reflector from a contemporary fine artist.
We both got to try some simplified block printing with a tray full of Shakespearean words.
Everywhere I turned something beautiful or whimsical caught my eye.
There are also many non Shakespearean books here.
This book gave me a giggle for the whole rest of the week. It’s called A Colorful Critique of Corruption. It was, as a coworker put it, proof of the longevity of PowerPoint.
It was meant to be a job application, and it worked. The author got the job.
I felt the curators sense of humor here.
I love that across the page showing rich gentleman entering the market place the solution to their encounters with corruption was simply “Stocks”.
Hahaha
The upstairs of the museum had a theater that we didn’t get to see because a play was going on and a research library that we didn’t get to see because it’s only open to us random folk on the weekends but we did get to see the great hall.
This was a long room with good snacks and drinks and big comfy chairs, done up in the Elizabethan style. It’s very pretty.
I was imagining moving the furniture aside and doing our dance in there.
I want to go back and see those things we missed.
I’ve let my family know that I would like to go back for my birthday this year and do their fancy tea and poke around the theater and the library.
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