Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night at King’s: A Guided Tour

Posted on January 5, 2024 | Leave a comment

Both in the library and on this blog, we have spent the past year marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, and it seems appropriate to bring our celebrations to a close on Twelfth Night itself with a look at some of the play’s various manifestations in our library collections.

Twelfth Night, or What You Will was written around 1601 but didn’t appear in print until its inclusion in the First Folio of 1623. It’s my personal favourite of Shakespeare’s comedies, so I give particular thanks to the First Folio’s editors Heminges and Condell for rescuing it from likely oblivion.

Opening page of Twelfth Night in the First Folio (Thackeray.D.38.2)

There’s no question about it, the guy knew how to start a play. ‘When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’ (Macbeth.) ‘Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.’ (Richard III.) ‘Good day, sir.’ (Timon of Athens.) The memorable opening scene of Twelfth Night sees Orsino, Duke of Illyria, addressing one of his court musicians:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

The first line of Orsino’s speech was ‘borrowed’ by the poet Colonel Henry Heveningham (1651-1700) for a lyric opening ‘If music be the food of love / Sing on till I am fill’d with joy.’ Heveningham’s text was set three times by Henry Purcell (1659-1695), the greatest English composer of his generation, one version being included in the huge two-volume compendium of Purcell’s songs Orpheus Britannicus, published posthumously in 1698. The copy below comes from the second edition of 1706 held in the Rowe Music Library.

Title page and page 6 of Henry Purcell, Orpheus Britannicus, Book I (LU.13/1)

Another posthumous publication in the Rowe with a Twelfth Night connection is a set of sonatas for violin or hautboy (oboe) and harpsichord by the composer William Babell (1690-1723), printed by the noted music publisher John Walsh in 1725. The edition includes a preface by Walsh describing Babell as his ‘late lov’d friend’ and observing that ‘had he liv’d in Shakespear’s time, we might justly have concluded him the occasion of the following lines’, appending Orsino’s words.

Title page and dedication page of William Babell, XII Solos for a Violin or Hautboy … (Rw.13.7/1)

Some sources online attribute Babell’s early death to ‘intemperate habits’; this has proved impossible to verify.

Shakespeare includes a small number of songs in Twelfth Night, all sung by the clown Feste, and three in particular have inspired a multitude of musical settings: ‘When that I was and a little tiny boy’ (with its refrain of ‘For the rain it raineth every day’), ‘Come away, death’, and most popular of all ‘O mistress mine’. The Rowe Library holds a partsong setting of this text, described as a ‘Glee, for five voices’, by R.J.S. Stevens. By the time it was ‘entered at Stationer’s Hall’ on 19 April 1790, Stevens must already have experienced success as a composer of Shakespeare songs, as attested by the legend in the caption title: ‘Author of “Sigh no more Ladies”’.

Pages 1 and 2 of R.J.S. Stevens, O Mistress Mine (Rw.111.16/18)

In nineteenth-century Europe there was no shortage of musical stage versions of Shakespeare, the most notable including Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict (after Much Ado about Nothing) and Verdi’s Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff; but Twelfth Night, perhaps surprisingly, was not a popular choice with composers.

One exception was the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884), who in his final years began work on an opera, Viola, written to a libretto by the young Eliška Krásnohorská. Sadly only fragments of the opera were written. It opens with a shipwreck, followed by a scene between Sebastian and Antonio. The excerpt below shows Viola’s first entry, where she curses the ‘seductive surface’ of the sea she believes has swallowed her brother.

Title page and page 13 of Bedřich Smetana, Viola (Rw.82.SME.9/2)

In the early years of the twentieth century, the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck struck up a fruitful partnership with the influential theatre director Max Reinhardt, writing incidental music for four Shakespeare plays staged at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. The last of these was 1907’s Was ihr wollt, the excerpt below showing the opening of ‘O Liebchen mein’ (‘O mistress mine’), sung by Feste (identified here as Narr, i.e. Clown).

Title page and page 4 of Engelbert Humperdinck, Musik zu Shakespeares Was ihr wollt (Rw.82.HUM.4/4)

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ light and refreshing partsong setting of the same text dates from 1891 when he was a student at the Royal College of Music. It features on this record from 1960, one of several brightly-coloured EPs released by the choir of King’s College during the early years of David Willcocks’ tenure as Director of Music.

Cover of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Three Shakespeare Songs, The Turtle Dove, Two Elizabethan Songs (Choir.EP.1960.VAU.Thr)

To finish, we return to the play. In the 1950s the British Council commissioned Cambridge’s Marlowe Dramatic Society to record all Shakespeare’s plays for Argo Records using the text of the New Cambridge Edition. This project would culminate in 1964, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. Presiding over the recordings was director George ‘Dadie’ Rylands of King’s, who assembled casts consisting of members of the Marlowe Society and additional ‘professional players’, some of whom had been past members of the Society. The 1961 cast of Twelfth Night included Dorothy Tutin as Viola, Jill Balcon as Olivia, Patrick Wymark as Sir Toby Belch, Prunella Scales as Maria, and the tenor Peter Pears as Feste.

Cover of Twelfth Night (Rec.SHA.Twe.1961)

Insert, ‘The Works of William Shakespeare’ (Rec.SHA.Twe.1961)

Two excerpts from the Marlowe Society recording of Twelfth Night also feature in this compilation of scenes from Shakespeare’s comedies issued the following year. The fabulous covers of both this LP and the box set above (showing Malvolio in his yellow cross-gartered stockings) were designed by Argo’s in-house designer Arthur Wragg.

Cover of Scenes from Shakespeare: The Comedies, Volume I (Rec.SHA.Com.I.1962)

You can browse King’s College’s First Folio on the Cambridge University Digital Library here, and it also features on the First Folios Compared website where you can compare it side by side with other digitised copies of the First Folio.

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The Consolation of Literature

Posted on November 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

It is not unusual to seek refuge in our favourite authors when faced with difficult situations. On the day on which we celebrate the quatercentenary of the First Folio’s publication (8 November 1623), it is timely to remember that Shakespeare’s play The Tempest played an important role in the New Zealand author Janet Frame’s life and writing. Confined to various mental institutions for eight years with misdiagnosed schizophrenia, she used to derive comfort by scribbling lines from The Tempest and poems she loved on the wall of her isolation room, an experience dramatised in her novel Faces in the Water (1961): “With the pencil I wrote on the wall snatches of remembered poems but the pencil applied to the Brick Building wall was like a revolutionary dye that refuses to ‘take’”.[1]

Opening of The Tempest, first published 400 years ago today in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (London: printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount, 1623; Thackeray.38.D.2). This is one of the plays that might have been lost had it not been included in the First Folio.

The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow found solace in Dante when coming to terms with the loss of his wife, as he confided to his friend Ferdinand Freiligrath on 24 May 1867: “Of what I have been through, during the last six years, I dare not venture to write even to you; it is almost too much for any man to bear and live. I have taken refuge in this translation of the Divine Comedy”.[2]

Janet Frame (1924-2004) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) found comfort in Shakespeare and Dante respectively.

During World War II, another eminent Dante enthusiast, the German critic Ernst Robert Curtius, wrote to Fritz Schalk on 30 October 1944:

Am 18. (sind) alle Fenster und Türen unserer Wohnung kaputt gegangen. Bonn zur Hälfte zerstört, die ‚Insel des Friedens’! Dies & vieles andre deprimiert mich tief. En attendant lese ich Dante & Vergil.[3]

[On the 18th all the windows and doors in our flat were shattered. Bonn half-destroyed, the ‘island of peace’! This and many other things make me feel deeply depressed. En attendant I read Dante & Virgil].

Curtius also commended an eminent German mathematician who began to learn the 14,233-line Divine Comedy by heart during the Christmas of 1914 “um sich über die trübe Gegenwart hinaustragen zu lassen” [in order to get over the bleak present].[4]

King’s College alumnus Gerald Warre Cornish (1874-1916), a classical scholar who was killed in action in France, seems to have coped in a similar way during World War I by immersing himself in the Bible. On his body was found a muddy notebook containing his translations of St Paul’s Epistles, published in 1937 as St Paul from the Trenches: A Rendering of the Epistles to the Corinthians and Ephesians Done in France during the Great War.

During an earlier war, another classical author, Homer, provided strength to the educationalist Sir Theodore Morison (1863-1936), a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, whose copy of the Iliad is in our rare-book collection. His inscription on the flyleaf reads: “This book was I believe given to me by Percy Wallace in Aligarh some time between 1890 & 1895. It accompanied me on the German East African campaign & I read it through when I was at Ujiji & Tabora & during the pursuit of Capt. Neumann in company with the Belgian forces. It was in a sadly tattered condition when it got back to England, so in memory of its vicissitudes I had it bound in the School of Art, Armstrong College. Theodore Morison”:

Homērou Ilias (Oxford: J. H. Parker, between 1849 and 1890; M.37.114). Theodore Morison’s inscription and (right) the spine of the rebound book with his gilt initials on the bottom panel. Percy Maxwell Wallace (1863-1943) was professor of English Literature at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, India between 1887 and 1890. Theodore Morison was the principal at the College from 1899 to 1905. When he returned to England, Morison also served as the principal of Armstrong College in Durham.

The verb “accompanied” is significant as it suggests that the book became a sort of companion in the course of his trials and tribulations, in a way not entirely dissimilar to the role Philosophy played during Boethius’s imprisonment:

Incipit of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1476; Keynes.Ec.7.1.4). The editio princeps was published around 1474, which makes this incunable one of the earliest printed versions of Boethius’s seminal work, where he describes his dialogues with a personified Philosophy on a number of issues including fate, good and evil, and free will.

As we celebrate one of the most important books in English literature today, Prospero’s words to Miranda describing Gonzalo’s kindness in providing them with necessities during the move to the island, aptly summarise the sentiment shared by book lovers as diverse as Janet Frame, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, E. R. Curtius, G. W. Cornish, and Theodore Morison:

The Tempest, Act I, scene ii, lines 278-80 as they appear on leaf A2r of the First Folio.

IJ

Notes

[1] Faces in the Water (London: The Women’s Press, 1991), p. 206

[2]  Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: With Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence, vol. III, ed. Samuel Longfellow (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), pp. 89-90

[3] In Willi Hirdt, “Ernst Robert Curtius und Dante Alighieri”, in “In Ihnen begegnet sich das Abendland”: Bonner Vorträge zur Erinnerung an Ernst Robert Curtius, ed. Wolf-Dieter Lange (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1990), p. 181

[4] “Neue Dantestudien”, Romanische Forschungen, 60 (1947), p. 238

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Spooky Shakespeare: Macbeth

Posted on October 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

As the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare’s First Folio reaches Halloween and the nights draw ever inward, our focus shifts to some of the spookier elements in Shakespeare’s plays, and particularly the witches and ghosts to be found in Macbeth. In addition, as we proceed, other witches and eerie creatures may swoop in from elsewhere in the Library’s collections.

The opening page of Macbeth in the First Folio (Thackeray.D.38.2)

The opening page of Macbeth in the First Folio (Thackeray.D.38.2)

Macbeth, believed to have been first performed in 1606, appears in print for the first time in the First Folio in 1623. It is thought that the Folio text was drawn from the latest version in theatres at the time, which incorporated revisions by the playwright Thomas Middleton (1580-1627).  One of Middleton’s revisions is thought to be the addition of two songs for scenes featuring the witches: “Come away, come away” and “Black spirits and white”. These songs are only mentioned by title in the Folio, but appear, complete with full lyrics, in Middleton’s own play The Witch (ca. 1613-1616). This expansion of the role of the witches reflected the continuing fascination of Jacobean audiences with witchcraft. This fascination was born partly out of the obsessions of King James I, whose book Dæmonologie was first published in 1597, and was then reprinted when he ascended the throne of England in 1603. James, who was convinced that he had almost met his death via witch-conjured storms in the North Sea, argued in his book that witchcraft arose from demons and humans working together to spread misery and destruction. Shakespeare is thought to have used Dæmonologie as one of his chief sources and inspirations in creating the play in the first place, likely with an eye on the King’s favour.  The plot’s focus on the murder of a King and its aftermath is also believed to reflect elements of the Gunpowder plot of 1605.

Image of a witch on a broomstick depicted in gilt decoration on a blue cloth book cover

Cover of The Blue Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang, London, 1897 (Rylands.C.LAN.Blu.1897)

Illustration of three witches flying through the sky on broomsticks, accompanied by black cats

Frontispiece of The Ingoldsby Legends, by Thomas Ingoldsby; illustrated by Arthur Rackham, London, 1907 (YHK BARH ZIN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next we turn to two eighteenth-century editions of the dramatic works of Shakespeare. The first, part of the Keynes Bequest, was edited by Lewis Theobald (ca. 1688-1744), who is a significant figure in Shakespeare scholarship. Theobald worked hard to correct errors and alterations that had crept into the plays through the work of earlier eighteenth-century editors, and surveyed as many surviving copies of the plays as he could in order to produce the most authoritative versions possible. His edition, originally published in 1733, was drawn upon heavily by subsequent major editors such as Edmund Malone (1741-1812), and thus continues to inform modern editions of the plays. Our set of Theobald’s Shakespeare dates from 1762. Macbeth appears in volume six, accompanied by an engraving by Hubert-François Gravelot (1699-1773), which depicts Macbeth confronting Banquo’s ghost during the feast scene (Act 3, scene 4).

Engraving of a feast scene in which Macbeth confronts the ghost of Banquo

Plate from The Works of Shakespeare, edited by Mr Theobald, London, 1762 (Keynes.P.13.24)

 

Title page of 1762 edition of the works of Shakespeare

Title page of volume six of The works of Shakespeare, [edited] by Mr Theobald, London, 1762 (Keynes.P.13.24)

First page of Macbeth.

First page of Macbeth from The works of Shakespeare, [edited] by Mr Theobald, London, 1762 (Keynes.P.13.24)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second eighteenth-century edition is, like the First Folio, part of the Thackeray Collection. This fifteen-volume set, which dates from 1793, is an expanded version of an eight-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays which originally appeared in 1765, and which was co-edited by the eminent writer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).  Johnson had an abiding love of Shakespeare and had long wished to produce his own edition of the plays. He tested the waters in 1745 with the publication of his Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, then spent the next twenty years working towards his goal. The preface to Macbeth in the 1793 edition includes Johnson’s ruminations on the supernatural themes of the play. He states:

A poet who should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment, and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of probability … and condemned to write fairy tales instead of tragedies; but a survey of the notions that prevailed at the time when this play was written, will prove that Shakspeare [sic] was in no danger of such censures, since he only turned the system that was then universally admitted, to his advantage, and was far from overburdening the credulity of his audience.

Speaking of the prevailing atmosphere of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, he writes evocatively:

The Reformation did not immediately arrive at its meridian, and though day was gradually increasing upon us, the goblins of witchcraft still continued to hover in the twilight.

Having touched upon on James I’s preoccupation with witchcraft and its effect on the population, he goes on to say:

Thus the doctrine of witchcraft was very powerfully inculeated [sic]; and as the greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted but this persuasion made a rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated in its favour.

Image of the title page of Johnson's edition of the plays

Title page of The Plays of William Shakspeare, edited by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, London, 1793 (Thackeray.J.62.1)

Image of the first page of Macbeth from Johnson's edition of the plays

First page of Macbeth from volume 7 of The Plays of William Shakspeare, edited by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, London, 1793 (Thackeray.J.62.7)

Black and white illustration of three witches huddled in an old shack

Three witches from a story called “The witches’ frolic”. Plate facing page 106 of The Ingoldsby Legends

An old bent-over woman with a black hat and a cat standing outside a hovel on a wild moor

“There’s an old woman dwells upon Tappington Moor”. Plate facing page 26 of The Ingoldsby Legends

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1807, Charles Lamb (1775-1834) and his sister Mary (1764-1847) produced a prose version of some of Shakespeare’s plays, modified to be suitable for children. More adult elements and complicated subplots were removed, but care was taken to adhere to the spirit of the originals, and to keep as much of the language as they could. The Library has a copy of the sixth edition, dating from 1838, which is the first edition to credit Mary Lamb on the title page. Macbeth appears in this volume, and the witches are described as follows:

… three figures like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures.

Title page of Tales from Shakspeare, which features an engraving of Shakespeare

Title page of Tales from Shakspeare, by Mr and Miss Lamb, London, 1838 (YHK LAM X 4)

First page of text from the prose version of Macbeth

Opening page of Macbeth from Tales from Shakspeare, by Mr and Miss Lamb, London, 1838 (YHK LAM X 4)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An illustration, pictured below, accompanies the tale, showing Macbeth and Banquo encountering these strange beings.

Macbeth and Banquo in armour, confronting three cloaked and bearded figures

Engraving of Macbeth and Banquo encountering the three witches. Plate from Tales from Shakspeare, by Mr and Miss Lamb, London, 1838 (YHK LAM X 4)

We leave you with a final dose of the supernatural via another wonderful  illustration by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) from The Ingoldsby Legends. Originally serialised in the 1830s, the legends comprised ghost stories, myths and poems written by clergyman Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845) under the pen-name Thomas Ingoldsby. They were later published in book form and were hugely popular for decades. An edition featuring Rackham’s glorious illustrations was first published in 1898.

A gathering of witches, goblins and ghouls seemingly having a friendly chat amongst themselves

“Witches and warlocks, ghosts, goblins and ghouls”. Plate facing page 396 of The Ingoldsby Legends

Stay safe and watch out for whatever might be lurking out there in the dark this Halloween!

References

Julian Goodare, A royal obsession with black magic started Europe’s most brutal witch hunts   [accessed 10/10/23]

Emma Smith, The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio, Oxford, 2015

You can browse King’s College’s First Folio on the Cambridge University Digital Library here and it also features on the First Folios Compared website where you can compare it side by side with other digitised copies of the First Folio.

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A Fairy Tale

Posted on June 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

To continue our series of blog posts marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, now seems a particularly opportune time to take a look at A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in the mid-1590s. The text of the play in the First Folio of 1623 is based mainly on that of the second quarto edition of the play, printed in 1619.

The opening page of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the First Folio (Thackeray.D.38.2)

Sadly at King’s we have no copy of either quarto, but we do have an 18th-century curiosity: The Favourite New Songs & Duet in the Fairy Tale, composed by Michael Arne (son of Thomas ‘Rule, Britannia!’ Arne), and printed by Charles and Samuel Thompson in St Paul’s Church Yard, London, in 1764.

Title page of The Favourite New Songs & Duet in the Fairy Tale (Rw.85.118/3)

To put The Fairy Tale in context, we need to go back to 1760s London. Actually, let’s go back a century earlier, to Monday 29 September 1662, when Samuel Pepys went out on the town:

I sent for some dinner and there dined, Mrs. Margaret Pen being by, to whom I had spoke to go along with us to a play this afternoon, and then to the King’s Theatre, where we saw “Midsummer’s Night’s Dream,” which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure.

(Is there an entry in Pepys’ diaries where he doesn’t mention handsome women? I salute the horniest man of the English Restoration.)

In case your memory needs refreshing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has several interconnected plots, chief among them a dispute between Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the fairies, a romantic intrigue between four young lovers, Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander, and the rehearsal of a play by a group of amateur actors (described by the fairy Puck as ‘rude mechanicals’).

The literary scholar George Winchester Stone, Jr., writing in 1939, suggests that the unorthodox mixture of realistic material (the mechanicals), classical mythology and fairy lore was ‘bound to fail in presentation’, which may account partly for the variety of reinventions of the play in the decades that followed Pepys’ disappointing visit to the King’s Theatre.

By the mid-18th century the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane was thriving under the command of actor-manager David Garrick. Taking his cue from the pageants fashionable at the time, Garrick’s first Theatre Royal production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in 1755, took the guise of an opera called The Fairies, which boasted music by John Christopher Smith (advertised as ‘pupil to Mr. Handel’), two Italian singers for the arias, and a troop of boys for the fairies.

Garrick’s collaborator on this production was the dramatist George Colman (sometimes known as ‘George the First’ to distinguish him from his identically named son), who seems to have been the driving force behind The Fairy Tale, first staged on 26 November 1763. Whereas The Fairies of 1755 focused largely on the two pairs of lovers and cut the mechanicals entirely, The Fairy Tale, judging by the published script, is the reverse. The lovers are nowhere to be seen, and the script is only about a quarter of the length of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as it appears in the First Folio.

The reason for this drastic abridgement may have been to make room for instrumental and vocal numbers. The four songs that appear in the published score of The Favourite New Songs & Duet in the Fairy Tale are three solo arias, ‘Kingcup, daffodil and rose’ (‘sung by Miss Wright’), ‘Yes, yes, I know you, you are he’ (ditto), and ‘Come follow, follow, follow me’ (‘sung by Masr. Rawworth’), along with a duet, ‘Wellcome, wellcome to this place’ (sung by both together), none of them to texts by Shakespeare.

‘Kingcup, daffodil and rose’ from The Favourite New Songs & Duet in the Fairy Tale (Rw.85.118/3)

The script contains about fourteen songs or likely songs. These include a number of verses from the original play, such as ‘Over hill, over dale’, ‘You spotted snakes’, ‘Up and down, up and down’ and ‘Flower of this purple dye’, and also, to round things off, ‘Orpheus with his lute’ (borrowed from Henry VIII) and ‘Sigh no more, ladies’ (borrowed from Much Ado about Nothing). Why do none of these more familiar texts appear in the Favourite Songs volume? Perhaps because in the production they were sung to pre-existing and already popular musical settings.

Most of the songs in The Fairy Tale, even those belonging to particular characters in Shakespeare’s play, are assigned to either ‘1st Fairy’ (Miss Wright) or ‘2nd Fairy’ (Master Rawworth), which suggests these two were specialist singers. The identity of Master Rawworth (called Raworth in the play text) is hazy, but Miss Wright is undoubtedly the soprano Elizabeth Wright, whom Arne eventually married in November 1766. Her performance must have been a success: over the next three and a half years The Fairy Tale received forty-one performances at the Theatre Royal, and in 1777 it was revived at the Haymarket Theatre, which had just been bought by Colman.

The end of Michael and Elizabeth Arne’s marriage has a hint of Shakespearean tragedy about it: in 1768, perhaps emboldened by their joint success at the Theatre Royal, where Elizabeth had become a leading lady, Arne built a laboratory at Chelsea for the study of alchemy, but went bankrupt and found himself in debtors’ prison; Elizabeth died the following year, with the writer Charles Burney, a friend of the family, claiming that Arne had ‘sung [her] to death’. Arne himself died destitute in 1786.

Portrait of Michael Arne in happier days by Johan Zoffany, c. 1765. Image from Wikimedia Commons

To end on a sunnier note, the Favourite Songs volume ends with an appendix containing transposed ‘guittar’ parts for all songs not written in ‘proper’ keys. So on page 18 we find a guitar part in C for ‘Kingcup, daffodil and rose’, originally written in the unfriendly key of E flat. The presence of guitar parts brings home the purpose of this publication: to enable performance outside the context of the play. It is pleasing to think of these modest but attractive songs having a life beyond Drury Lane, perhaps at public pleasure gardens (such as Ranelagh Gardens in Chelsea, where Michael Arne first saw Elizabeth Wright sing in 1763), or even in the home.

Guitar part for ‘Kingcup, daffodil and rose’ from The Favourite New Songs & Duet in the Fairy Tale (Rw.85.118/3)

References

Cholij, I.B. (1995). Music in Eighteenth-Century London Shakespeare productions. PhD thesis, King’s College, University of London.

Parkinson, J.A. (2001). ‘Arne, Michael.’ Grove Music Online [subscription only]

Stone, G.W., Jr. (1939). ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Hands of Garrick and Colman’. PMLA, 54, 467-482.

You can browse King’s College’s First Folio on the Cambridge University Digital Library here, and it also features on the First Folios Compared website where you can compare it side by side with other digitised copies of the First Folio.

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Digitising Shakespeare’s First Folio at King’s College

Posted on May 18, 2023 | 1 comment

In my role as photographer at Cambridge University Library’s Digital Content Unit (DCU), I am fortunate to encounter fascinating and unique material. Digitising the library’s vast collections means that I have handled an early biblical palimpsest, illuminated Persian manuscripts, Japanese painted scrolls, and even a 4000 years old Sumerian clay tablet. That is the nature of the work itself: the ever-changing challenge of utilising high-tech photography to create a digital record of wide-ranging pieces of humanity’s endeavours.

Mid-summer 2022, however, I was given an unusual assignment. King’s College’s precious copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio needed to be digitised. Although King’s is in sight of the University Library, bringing this invaluable volume to the DCU studio for imaging was not an option. It was decided that I would set up a mobile studio in the college library to photograph the First Folio over a two-week period.

Entrance of King’s College Library in Webb’s Court

Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (also known as ‘the First Folio’) hardly needs any introduction, especially during the year in which we celebrate the quatercentenary of its publication. Gathering 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, it was published in 1623, seven years after the playwright‘s death. Its literary significance cannot be overstated. Notably, as some original manuscripts were lost over the centuries, the Folio constitutes the earliest record for 18 plays, including some of Shakespeare’s most famous works such as Macbeth and The Tempest. Out of the 235 known First Folio copies disseminated around the world, four are held by Cambridge University institutions, including the one in King’s College. The green leather-bound volume with gold embossing is only slightly taller than an A4 sheet of paper. An engraving of the Bard’s likeness adorns the frontispiece, followed by over 900 pages of text. As Dr James Clements, College Librarian, remarked, it was striking to think that I would be the first person to look closely at (and turn) every single page of the book in many decades, or perhaps a few hundred years.

Close-up of the First Folio frontispiece portrait of William Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droeshout.

One September morning, my colleague Gordon McMillan drove me and a van load of photography equipment across the river. With the assistance of another peer, Błażej Mikuła, I took possession of the space which would become my office for the coming weeks. It was a seminar room on the second floor of the library. The octagonal space was entirely lined with glass-fronted cabinets packed full of rare books. To install my mobile digitisation studio, I moved chairs to the sides and I used the large, solid-wood round table as a sturdy base on which to place a traveller’s book cradle. This device provides extensive support for fragile and precious bound items. Nestled between the cradle’s boards, the book is mostly held down by gravity and a weighted string (known as a snake) keeps it open in the right place. A clear acrylic sheet propped up by foam blocks ensured that the targeted page stayed flat, while minimising the pressure on this historic binding. It is important that the item being captured sits parallel to the camera in order to produce a non-distorted image.

Camera setup in the seminar room. The PhaseOne camera is on a tripod looking over the traveller’s book cradle, on which rests the First Folio, with flash lights on both sides.

The high-resolution camera (a 100-megapixel PhaseOne digital back with a 120mm prime lens) was mounted onto a heavy-duty tripod and the spot for the tripod’s legs was marked on the rug with black tape. The two Broncolor flash lights flanking the camera, equipped with soft boxes, received the same treatment. I tied laptop tethering and all power cables together and out of the way so that they would not constitute a trip hazard. It was crucial to prevent setup disturbances throughout the imaging process to guarantee a consistency of imaging. While this is easier to achieve in a traditional photography studio where lights and book cradles are fixed, replicating it from scratch in a room which has not been designed for it requires a whole lot more effort.

The imaging started with exposure and colour calibration. I tested the positioning of my flash lights, as well as potential reflections. This highlighted the need to cover the camera brand name and other elements which were reflecting in the acrylic sheet. The angle of the lights was adjusted to account for the fact that this traveller’s book cradle sits in the opposite direction to what its larger relatives would in a photography studio. These light and colour parameters remained unchanged during the entire digitisation process. A meticulous workflow results in extremely accurate and detailed digital reproduction. Images do not need to be retouched through post-processing software. A frustrating side effect was that I also had to limit stray light by closing the window shutters while photographing, thus depriving me of the delightful views of Webb’s Court!

The first page of ‘The Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet’ on my laptop screen during the digitisation. The white snake is visible on the left of the image, outside the cropped area which will constitute the final image.

A close-up photo of the title page decorated by an ornate head-piece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regularly checking that the image was in focus, I photographed the front cover first, followed by the rectos of each page, interleaving them with a black background. Once all the rectos were imaged, I flipped the book over and repeated the process, capturing the versos including the back cover. Before I knew it I came across the words uttered by Hamlet ‘To be or not to be…’. It was hard not to read every famous passage of these seminal plays. Finally, the spine and gilt top and bottom edges were recorded, therefore creating a complete digital copy of the volume. Importantly, I double (and triple) checked the hundreds of files before dismantling the mobile studio, as indeed, the exact photography conditions would all be near impossible to reproduce once they were taken apart.

The First Folio book spine as seen through the camera viewfinder. ‘Shakespeare – 1623’ is embossed in gold.

The beauty of King’s College and its various locations is something I found myself constantly in awe of during the fortnight I spent there. Whether it was a river Cam view from a library window, the beautiful display of modern paintings on the south wall of the dining hall (talk about a backdrop for fish and chips on Friday), or, of course, the glorious fan vaulting of the college’s chapel ceiling, it remains one of the greatest aspects of my job. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention another undoubtable highlight of my mission: meeting the staff of King’s College Library. I was very appreciative of all of them for making me feel welcome, inviting me to join their tea breaks and lunches, and for telling me about their work. I was particularly grateful to James Clements for all his help and kindness. His behind-the-scenes tour of the library was fascinating, and I was touched that he took time out of his busy schedule to show me around.

King’s College Chapel, a fifteenth-century wonder basking in late afternoon light.

Friday fish and chips in the college nineteenth-century gothic revival dining hall.

The King’s College First Folio is fully digitised and accessible online on this link.

Amélie Deblauwe

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Celebrating “Folio Day”

Posted on April 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Today marks the 407th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death and, by tradition, the 459th of his birth. This day has also been designated as “Folio Day” and begins a season of celebratory events taking place around the world to commemorate the quatercentenary of the publication of the First Folio on 8th November 1623. Various libraries and other institutions will have their First Folios on display during this time, and King’s College Library will also be taking part in the commemorations by exhibiting the First, Second and Fourth Folios as part of Open Cambridge on Friday 8th September 2023 from 10.30am to 4.00pm. Save the date!

As it’s Folio Day, we thought it would be appropriate to provide some details about our volume and its provenance. King’s College’s First Folio is one of only 235 extant copies, most of which have been described in detail in Rasmussen and West’s The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue. Our copy has recently been digitised and can be viewed in its entirety on the Cambridge University Digital Library website (a post about the digitisation process will follow in due course).

One of the most distinctive features of the book is the engraved title-page portrait of Shakespeare, which exists in two states: the earlier has lighter shading, while in the later state the shading is heavier, especially around the collar; there are also minor differences in the jawline and moustache. According to Rasmussen and West, the texture of the portrait suggests that the King’s College copy is an engraved facsimile copied from a state 2 original:

Title page of Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (London: printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount, 1623; Thackeray.38.D.2).

Spot the difference: the original state 2 portrait in the Bodleian Library’s First Folio (Arch. G c.7) (© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford).

As well as missing the original portrait, our copy also lacks the seven preliminary leaves containing the dedication, various celebratory verses by the likes of Ben Jonson, the list of actors and the table of contents. As is sometimes the case with rare books, the last two leaves are also wanting, though in this copy these have been supplied in manuscript so skilfully that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were the original:

Leaf 3b6r in the King’s First Folio supplied in facsimile.

Leaf 3b6r in the Bodleian First Folio (© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford).

As for its provenance, the First Folio is part of the collection of rare books bequeathed to the college by George Thackeray, who was Provost at King’s from 1814 to his death in 1850. In Shakespearean fashion, tragedy is said to have been at the heart of his love of books. Following the death of his first wife, Thackeray married his second wife Mary Ann Cottin in 1816. Two years later, on 13 February 1818, she was in labour with their first child, and the accoucheur in attendance, Sir Richard Croft (1762-1818), started showing signs of anxiety and distress and was therefore persuaded to lie down and rest in another room. At about 2am, Croft shot himself in the head with two pistols Thackeray was keeping for personal protection. A volume of Shakespeare was found lying on the dressing table, open at a page containing the line in Love’s Labour’s Lost, “Where is the Princess?”:

Act V, scene ii from Love’s Labour’s Lost as it appears in the First Folio, with the phrase “Wher’s the Princesse?” highlighted in the second column.

Mary Ann’s labour may have shown similarities to that of Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817), who had died in childbirth the previous year; she was also attended by Sir Richard Croft. As pointed out by Jane Townley Pryme and Alicia Bayne, “It was supposed that he had never quite recovered from the shock occasioned by the Royal death, and that the anxiety of this case, combining with the coincidence of the passage in the play, which he had probably been reading, gave an impulse which he could not resist” (Memorials of the Thackeray Family, London, 1879, pp. 238-39).

Thackeray’s obituarist wrote that “this sad event threw an air of gloom and desolation about his house from which it never altogether recovered”. According to him, this early tragedy “threw him, for his general companionship, upon Erasmus and Propertius, black-letter Bibles, and odd books generally”. When he died in 1850, he bequeathed his black-letter books to King’s. His daughter, Mary Ann Elizabeth, lived into adulthood and left the rest of her father’s collection (including the First Folio), to the College when she died in 1879.

William Makepeace Thackeray, photographed here by Jesse Harrison Whitehurst, was a frequent visitor at the house of his second cousin Mary Ann. Another literary curiosity is that her unhappy love affair with Henry Kemble served as the plot for Henry James’s novel Washington Square (1880).

Our copy of the First Folio has a fascinating literary connection. George Thackeray, a cousin of William Makepeace Thackeray’s father Richmond Thackeray, was the novelist’s first cousin once removed. “After her father’s death Mary Ann Thackeray and her aunt lived in considerable state in London, where [William Makepeace] Thackeray was a frequent visitor to their home at 27 Portman Square” (The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray [London: Oxford University Press, 1945], vol. 1, p. 30, n. 11). It is therefore likely that William Makepeace Thackeray will have seen and consulted this copy of the First Folio at Mary Ann’s house.

More Shakespeare-related blog posts will follow in the course of this year, so watch this space!

IJ

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Shakespeare in Love: or, A Rose by any other Name.

Posted on February 14, 2023 | 1 comment

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

We all love Shakespeare,

And hope you do too!

Well, it is not for us to tell you what to think, but we can probably all agree that Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and what better Shakespeare play to consider on Saint Valentine’s day than Romeo and Juliet! But what is it? A love story? Love certainly appears to be one of the main themes. A comedy? It’s definitely full of humour. A history? Certainly the Romeo and Juliet story in various forms predates Shakespeare. Or (spoiler alert) a tragedy? Best not give away the end, although Shakespeare does right at the start of the play in the prologue, so I’m not sure why we’re worried!

Title page of Shakespeare, The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie, of Romeo and Iuliet (London: John Smethwicke, [1622]). (Shelfmark: Keynes.C.6.4).

In King’s Library we are lucky enough to have two early sources for this well-known play. The first is a quarto edition published in 1622 by John Smethwicke in London. The play is thought to have been written in the 1590s, and certainly performed by 1597 when the first quarto edition was published. Sometimes known as the ‘bad quarto’, that edition is considered to be an unreliable source, but a more reliable quarto edition (the second quarto) appeared in 1599. It was reprinted in 1609 (the third quarto) and our 1622 fourth quarto is mainly based on that.

Title page of Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (London: Jaggard and Blount, 1623).

The second source we have for Romeo and Juliet is the First Folio edition of 1623, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays without which about half of his dramatic output would be unknown to us today because only about half of his plays had previously been published. We have recently digitised our copy of the First Folio and it will be available to consult online very soon because, like many other institutions, King’s Library is marking the 400th anniversary of the printing of the First Folio in 1623 (see https://folio400.com/) throughout this year.

The famous prologue (with all the spoilers!) appears in the 1622 edition, but not in the First Folio:

Prologue from the 1622 quarto edition.

Opening of Romeo and Juliet in the First Folio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we see two of the famous moments in the play, the first when Romeo and Juliet first meet at the Capulets’ House, and the second, that iconic balcony scene:

Romeo and Juliet’s first conversation: “Let lips doe what hands doe”, from the 1622 quarto edition.

The balcony scene: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” in the First Folio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you might expect, there are significant differences in typography, spelling and punctuation between the two editions, and it is interesting to see them here by comparing the final two pages of each:

Final page of the 1622 quarto edtion, with an ink inscription “Remember mee when this you see when I am gon away from thee John Shute 1674”.

Final page of the play in the First Folio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether you’re observing Saint Valentine’s day today or not, you could do worse than spending a little time reading some Shakespeare, and we hope you have an enjoyable day whatever you’re doing!

_________

The digitisation of the King’s copy of the First Folio was made possible thanks to a donation from Fanny Greber in memory of her husband, Lloyd D. Raines (KC 1972).

JC

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Library History: An Online Exhibition

Posted on May 30, 2017 | Leave a comment

A couple of months ago we curated an exhibition featuring items highlighting various aspects of the history of King’s College Library over the centuries. Below you will find some of the exhibits.

From the late sixteenth century until the current library opened in 1828, King’s Library occupied five of the side chapels on the south side of the famous Chapel. For most of this period it was a chained library. This book is one of a few to have survived with the original chains intact.

Pierre Bersuire, Dictionarii seu repertorii moralis
Venice: Gaspare Bindoni, 1589 (D.13.3)

Theatre was one of John Maynard Keynes’ particular areas of interest and his book collection includes many plays. He founded the Cambridge Arts Theatre in 1936. This is a reprint of the second quarto of Romeo and Juliet that was published in 1599. All modern editions are based on this version, which is considered to be the most complete and reliable text of the play.

William Shakespeare, The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie, of Romeo and Juliet
London: Printed [by William Stansby] for John Smethwicke, [1622] (Keynes.C.6.4)

In 1638 Thomas Goad, a Kingsman and the son of Provost Roger Goad, who had been responsible for restoring the Library in the side chapels in King’s after a period of neglect, made provision in his will for the annual profit from some land he owned at Milton (near Cambridge) to be used in perpetuity to purchase divinity books for the Library. This was listed each year thereafter in the bursar’s account books as ‘Library Money’, and was spent on books and the upkeep of the bookcases and building.

Bursar’s book for 1697–98 (KCAR/4/1/4/106)

This is one of the books listed on the inventory of books bought in 1697–98: paid ‘to Mr. Bugg for his book’. In this case the book appears to have been bought directly from the author.

Francis Bugg, The Pilgrim’s Progress, from Quakerism, to Christianity
London: W. Kettleby, 1698 (D.13.3)

The volume below records donors of books to King’s College Library from about 1600 to about 1710, with details of the volumes they donated. On this page we see details of donations from three Provosts of King’s: Roger Goad, William Smith and Fogge Newton. The volume seems to have left King’s at some point in the 18th century, but was returned in 1784 as a note on the front flyleaf explains:

‘This book was given by the Revd Dr Farmer in 1784. He had found it at a Booksellers, & purchased it that it might be returned to the College. Wm Cooke’

Nomina eorum qu[i bibliothecam] Regalem sua munifice[ntia] locupletarunt [Donors’ Book]
(KCAC/6/2/29)

Finally, three historic bindings from the Thackeray Collection:

TOP LEFT: Calf armorial binding with the arms of Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford (1780-1855) (Thackeray.141)
TOP RIGHT: 16th-century manuscript waste binding consisting of a contemporary vellum sheet (stab-sewn) featuring part of the Psalms in textura quadrata with initials illuminated in red and blue (Thackeray.182)
BOTTOM: 19th-century blue goat skin stamped in gold (Thackeray.136)

GB/JC

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Shakespeare and Theatre in Cambridge: An Online Exhibition

Posted on October 21, 2016 | Leave a comment

Last month, King’s College Library and Archives hosted an exhibition for the Open Cambridge weekend as part of the events marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The exhibition, held on 9 and 10 September, showcased scarce editions of Shakespeare’s plays alongside other treasures from the special collections in the College Archive celebrating theatre and the history of theatre in Cambridge. Below are some selected highlights from the exhibition focusing on early editions of Shakespeare’s works.

College Librarian James Clements and College Archivist Patricia McGuire waiting to welcome visitors

College Librarian James Clements and College Archivist Patricia McGuire waiting to welcome visitors

King’s College’s First Folio (1623) is one of only 234 known surviving copies. The title-page portrait in this copy is not original and appears to be an engraved facsimile. The importance of this book cannot be overstated. Pivotal plays like The Tempest, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Julius Caesar were printed here for the first time, and may have been lost otherwise. Next to it is the first facsimile reprint of the First Folio, edited by Francis Douce. The date has been derived from the paper, which is watermarked: Shakespeare. J. Whatman, 1807:

Shakespeare’s First Folio (right) next to the 1807 facsimile reprint (left)

Shakespeare’s First Folio (right) next to the 1807 facsimile reprint (left)

On the other side of the display case are the two other Folios from the Thackeray Bequest: the Second (1632) and the Fourth (1685). The printing of the former was carried out by Thomas Cotes and a syndicate of five other partners: Richard Hawkins, John Smethwick, William Aspley, Robert Allot, and Richard Meighen. This copy bears the “exceedingly rare” Hawkins imprint (Frank Karslake, Book Auction Records, London: William Dawson, 1903; p. 355):

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies London: Printed by Tho[mas] Cotes, for Richard Hawkins, 1632

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies
London: Printed by Tho[mas] Cotes, for Richard Hawkins, 1632

The Fourth Folio included seven additional plays: Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Locrine; The London Prodigal; The Puritan; Sir John Oldcastle; Thomas Lord Cromwell; and A Yorkshire Tragedy. All of these had been printed as quartos during Shakespeare’s lifetime, but only Pericles is now seriously considered to have any Shakespearean connection. The front board of this copy was completely detached; it was repaired in August 2016 thanks to the grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Mr. William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies: Published According to the True Original Copies London: Printed for H. Herringman, E. Brewster, and R. Bentley, 1685.

Mr. William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies
London: Printed for H. Herringman, E. Brewster, and R. Bentley, 1685

As well as the Folio editions of Shakespeare’s plays, the exhibition also included early quartos of individual plays. This is a third edition of Henry V, a reprint of the second quarto of 1602. The imprint date is false, as the book was printed in 1619 for the Shakespearean collection of that year:

William Shakespeare, The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift London: Printed [by William Jaggard] for T[homas] P[avier], 1608 [i.e. 1619]

William Shakespeare, The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift
London: Printed [by William Jaggard] for T[homas] P[avier], 1608 [i.e. 1619]

Below is a copy of the fourth edition of Othello. The play was entered into the Stationers’ Register on 6 October 1621 by Thomas Walkley, and the first quarto was printed by him in 1622.

William Shakespeare, The Tragoedy of Othello, the Moore of Venice London: Printed for William Leak, 1655

William Shakespeare, The Tragoedy of Othello, the Moore of Venice
London: Printed for William Leak, 1655

Featured in the exhibition were also later editions of Shakespeare’s works. This 18th-century collection of his plays, edited by Kingsman George Steevens (1736-1800), includes a facsimile of Shakespeare’s will:

The Plays of William Shakspeare: In Fifteen Volumes. With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators. To Which Are Added Notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens London: Printed [by H. Baldwin] for T. Longman, et al., 1793

The Plays of William Shakspeare: In Fifteen Volumes. With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators. To Which Are Added Notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens
London: Printed [by H. Baldwin] for T. Longman, et al., 1793

Despite inclement weather on the second day, the event was attended by more than 600 local people:

Local residents attending the exhibition on 9 September 2016

Local residents attending the exhibition on 9 September 2016

Our Shakespeare season culminated in a public lecture on the First Folio by a leading world expert, Professor Emma Smith (Hertford College, Oxford) on 3 October 2016. Professor Smith’s talk took the captive audience into the First Folio, and investigated the clues it gives us about Shakespeare’s writing methods, the early modern theatre, and the development of the Shakespeare brand.

english_landscape_pantone

IJ

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Public Lecture on Shakespeare’s First Folio

Posted on September 23, 2016 | Leave a comment

Our series of events marking the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death culminates in a public lecture on Shakespeare’s First Folio by a leading world expert, Professor Emma Smith (Hertford College, Oxford), author of Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book (2016) and The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio (2015). The lecture will be held in the Audit Room at King’s College, Cambridge on Monday 3rd October 2016 at 6pm.

Front cover of Emma Smith's The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio (2015)

Front cover of Emma Smith’s The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio (2015)

Professor Smith’s lecture is entitled “Reading Shakespeare’s First Folio”. She will discuss the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, the First Folio of 1623, which has become one of the world’s most sought-after books. This illustrated talk takes us into the First Folio, and investigates the clues it gives us about Shakespeare’s writing methods, the early modern theatre, and the development of the Shakespeare brand. You can hear Professor Smith talk about the recent discovery of a copy of the First Folio on the Isle of Bute here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35973094

The event is free and open to all, but as spaces are limited, we ask that you reserve your place by going to the following website and clicking on ‘Register’ before printing your ticket:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reading-shakespeares-first-folio-lecture-by-professor-emma-smith-tickets-27940806705

Those attending the lecture are invited to visit King’s College Library to view the First Folio from the Thackeray Bequest between 5pm and 6pm on 3rd October and after the talk. We look forward to seeing you there!

english_landscape_pantone

IJ

 

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