Shakespeare's First Folio

Shakespeare's First Folio
Author: Emma Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191069280

This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of its place in different contexts with different priorities. This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare's reception and the history of the book. Unlike previous scholarly investigations of the First Folio, it is not concerned with the discussions of how the book came into being, the provenance of its texts, or the technicalities of its production. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying close attention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major themes: owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous reputation: a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognise Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare First Folio: A new worldwide census of first folios

The Shakespeare First Folio: A new worldwide census of first folios
Author: Anthony James West
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2001
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780198187684

This major reference book for Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers is in the second part of the story of "the greatest book" in the English language. Listing 228 copies of the First Folio, the Census gives concise descriptions of each, covering condition, special features, provenance, and binding. It traces the search for copies, deals with doubtful identifications, describes the tests for inclusion, and presents details of missing copies.

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's First Folio

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's First Folio
Author: Emma Josephine Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2016-08-18
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1107098785

An international team of scholars covers every aspect of one of the most famous books in the English language.

The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio

The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio
Author: Emma Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-04-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781851245987

A revised and updated edition of Shakespeare's First Folio that explains the significance of the iconic publication. The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio offers the first comprehensive biography of the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. In November 1623, the book arrived in the bookshop of the London publisher Edward Blount at the Black Bear. Long in the making, Master William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies--as the First Folio was then known--appeared seven years after Shakespeare's death. Nearly one thousand pages in length, the collection comprised thirty-six plays, half of which had never been previously published. Yet no fanfare surrounded the initial publication of Shakespeare's First Folio--no queue of eager readers, no launch to the top of the best-seller list. Nevertheless, it is hard to overstate the importance of this literary, cultural, and commercial moment. Emma Smith tells the story of the First Folio's origins, locating it within the social and political context of Jacobean London and bringing in the latest scholarship on the seventeenth-century book trade. Generously illustrated in color with key pages from the publication and comparative works, this new edition combines the 2016 discovery of a hitherto unknown edition of the First Folio at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute with the human, artistic, economic and technical stories of the birth of this landmark publication--and the birth of Shakespeare's towering reputation.

The Shakespeare Thefts

The Shakespeare Thefts
Author: Eric Rasmussen
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2011-10-11
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 0230341209

Part literary detective story, part Shakespearean lore, The Shakespeare Thefts will charm the Bard's many fans. The first edition of Shakespeare's collected works, the First Folio, published in 1623, is one of the most valuable books in the world and has historically proven to be an attractive target for thieves. Of the 160 First Folios listed in a census of 1902, 14 were subsequently stolen-and only two of these were ever recovered. In his efforts to catalog all these precious First Folios, renowned Shakespeare scholar Eric Rasmussen embarked on a riveting journey around the globe, involving run-ins with heavily tattooed criminal street gangs in Tokyo, bizarre visits with eccentric, reclusive billionaires, and intense battles of wills with secretive librarians. He explores the intrigue surrounding the Earl of Pembroke, arguably Shakespeare's boyfriend, to whom the First Folio is dedicated and whose personal copy is still missing. He investigates the uncanny sequence of events in which a wealthy East Coast couple drowned in a boating accident and the next week their First Folio appeared for sale in Kansas. We hear about Folios that were censored, the pages ripped out of them, about a volume that was marked in red paint-or is it blood?-on every page; and of yet another that has a bullet lodged in its pages.

Collecting Shakespeare

Collecting Shakespeare
Author: Stephen H. Grant
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2014-04-26
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 1421411873

The first biography of Henry and Emily Folger, who acquired the largest and finest collection of Shakespeare in the world. In Collecting Shakespeare, Stephen H. Grant recounts the American success story of Henry and Emily Folger. Shortly after marrying in 1885, the Folgers started buying, cataloging, and storing all manner of items about Shakespeare and his era. Emily earned a master's degree in Shakespeare studies. The frugal couple worked passionately as a tight-knit team during the Gilded Age, financing their hobby with the fortune Henry earned as president of Standard Oil Company of New York, where he was a trusted associate of John D. Rockefeller Sr. While a number of American universities offered to house the collection, the Folgers wanted to give it to the American people. Afraid the price of antiquarian books would soar if their names were revealed, they secretly acquired prime real estate on Capitol Hill near the Library of Congress. They commissioned the design and construction of an elegant building with a reading room, public exhibition hall, and the Elizabethan Theatre. The Folger Shakespeare Library was dedicated on the Bard's birthday on April 23, 1932. The library houses 82 First Folios, 277,000 books, and 60,000 manuscripts. It welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year and provides professors, scholars, graduate students, and researchers from around the world with access to the collections. It is also a vibrant center in Washington, DC, for cultural programs, including theater, concerts, lectures, and poetry readings. With unprecedented access to the primary sources within the Folger vault, Grant draws on interviews with surviving Folger relatives and visits to 35 related archives in the United States and in Britain to create a portrait of the remarkable couple who ensured that Shakespeare would have a beautiful home in America.

Acting from Shakespeare's First Folio

Acting from Shakespeare's First Folio
Author: Don Weingust
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2006-09-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135864098

Acting from Shakespeare's First Folio examines a series of techniques for reading and performing Shakespeare's plays that are based on the texts of the first ‘complete’ volume of Shakespeare's works: the First Folio of 1623. Do extra syllables in a line suggest how it might be played? Can Folio commas reveal character? Don Weingust places this work on Folio performance possibility within current understandings about Shakespearean text, describing ways in which these challenging theories about acting often align quite nicely with the work of the theories' critics. As part of this study, Weingust looks at the work of Patrick Tucker and his London-based Original Shakespeare Company, who have sought to discover the opportunities in using First Folio texts, acting techniques, and what they consider to be original Shakespearean performance methodologies. Weingust argues that their experimental performances at the Globe on Bankside have revealed enhanced possibilities not only for performing Shakespeare, but for theatrical practice in general.

Brief Chronicles

Brief Chronicles
Author: Roger Stritmatter
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2015-06-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781514600849

Brief Chronicles is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal dedicated to examining the Shakespeare authorship question and more generally topics in early modern authorship studies. Sponsored by the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, Brief Chronicles was established in 2009 and is included in the MLA International Bibliography and World Shakespeare Bibliography databases.General Editor: Roger A. Stritmatter, Ph.D., Coppin State UniversityManaging Editor: Michael Delahoyde, Ph.D., Washington State UniversityVolume 6 of Brief Chronicles features the following authors and topics:Articles* From the Pulpit: A Few Home Truths - A British Introduction, Alexander Waugh* Sisyphus and the Globe: Turning (on) the Media, Don Rubin* Biography, Genius, and Inspiration, Bernd Brackmann* Strat Stats Fail to Prove that 'Shakspere' is Another Spelling of 'Shakespeare,' Richard F. Whalen* Arms and Letters and the Name "William Shake-speare," Robert Detobel* The Use of State Power To Hide Edward de Vere's Authorship of the Works Attributed to "William Shake-speare," James Warren* Chaucer Lost and Found in Shakespeare's Histories, Jacob Hughes* A Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare's Aristophanic Comedy, Earl Showerman* Mark Twain and "Shake-Speare": Soul Mates, James Norwood* Ben Jonson and the Drummond "Informations": Why It Matters, Richard MalimReviews* Was William Scott a Plagiarist? A Review of Scott's The Model of Poesie, reviewed by Richard Waugaman* Dr. Magri's Bow and Quiver: Such Fruits Out of Italy: The Italian Renaissance in Shakespeare's Plays and Poems, reviewed by William Ray* Towards a Pragmatechnic Shakespeare Studies: A Review-Essay on U. Cambridge's Shakespeare and the Digital World, reviewed by Michael Dudley

Shakespeare in the Cinema

Shakespeare in the Cinema
Author: Stephen M. Buhler
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0791489752

Offering a comprehensive look at the strategies that filmmakers have employed in adapting Shakespeare's plays to the cinema, this book investigates what the task of Shakespearean adaptation reveals about film in general and focuses on patterns and approaches shared by various cinematic works. Buhler provides concise histories of each general strategy, which include non-illusionistic cinema, documentary interpretations, mass-market productions, transgressive and transnational cinema, and approaches that see film as either distinct from the stage or as an extension of theatrical traditions. The book spans more than a century of film, starting with the 1899 King John and extending through Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julie Taymor's Titus, and later releases.