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Folger Finds

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Folger Finds: Edwin Booth's royal tunic
Shakespeare and Beyond

Folger Finds: Edwin Booth's royal tunic

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Esther Ferington

Marking the anniversary of actor Edwin Booth’s birth on November 13, 1833, we explore a stunning historical costume from the Folger collection: an embroidered-velvet tunic that Booth wore onstage as King Richard III.

Helena Modjeska, a shining Polish-American star
Shakespeare and Beyond

Helena Modjeska, a shining Polish-American star

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Esther Ferington

Born on October 12, 1840, the Shakespearean star Helena Modjeska shone bright in two very different theatrical worlds, first becoming a leading lady in Warsaw and then, after moving to Anaheim, California, launching a second career as a leading actress…

Folger Finds: A Shakespeare quilt
Shakespeare quilt
Shakespeare and Beyond

Folger Finds: A Shakespeare quilt

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Shakespeare & Beyond

When you picture what’s in the Folger collection, many people imagine books and manuscripts from the early modern period — and we do have a lot of those! But the Folger also collects a variety of Shakespeare-related objects, including this…

Folger Finds: A carved oak casket for holding a Shakespeare First Folio
Shakespeare and Beyond

Folger Finds: A carved oak casket for holding a Shakespeare First Folio

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Casket, carved in an Elizabethan style 1866.Imagine buying a book and having the queen of England give you a special case in which to store it! That’s what happened after wealthy heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts purchased a Shakespeare First Folio in…

Five Folger Finds for beating the heat and cooling off this summer
swimming
Shakespeare and Beyond

Five Folger Finds for beating the heat and cooling off this summer

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Is the July heat getting to you? Here are five items from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection that are just right for summertime. 1. A 1699 guide to swimming “In the seventeenth century, swimming was viewed not so much as…

Folger Finds: Photographs of Hamlet in Japan
Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet
Shakespeare and Beyond

Folger Finds: Photographs of Hamlet in Japan

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Shakespeare & Beyond

In a recent post on the Folger’s Collation blog, assistant curator Elizabeth DeBold shared a small set of photographs, newly added to the Folger collection, that document a 1933 Japanese production of Hamlet: These five photos provide a glimpse of…

Up Close: Lady Macbeth, America, and the stain of slavery
Shakespeare and Beyond

Up Close: Lady Macbeth, America, and the stain of slavery

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Esther French

In a famous scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the sleep-walking Lady Macbeth desperately attempts to scrub her hands clean of the (invisible) blood stains from the murders committed by her and her husband. “Out, damned spot, out, I say!” she says,…

Up Close: A 'Seven Ages of Man' painting
Seven Ages of Man
Shakespeare and Beyond

Up Close: A 'Seven Ages of Man' painting

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Take a closer look at a 19th-century oil painting in the Folger collection that depicts all seven ages of man from Jaques’s speech in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”

Up Close: The voodoo Macbeth that generated jobs for Black Americans during the Great Depression
Shakespeare and Beyond

Up Close: The voodoo Macbeth that generated jobs for Black Americans during the Great Depression

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Shakespeare & Beyond

A spectacular 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of “Macbeth” in New York City employed hundreds of black actors and theater technicians. It was financed by the Federal Theatre Project, a controversial part of the federal government’s New Deal programs to…

Up Close: Three scenes from Hamlet
Shakespeare and Beyond

Up Close: Three scenes from Hamlet

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Can you identify what’s happening in each of these three scenes from Hamlet? The drawings by British illustrator John Jellicoe are part of the Folger collection.

Top 5 Folger Finds of 2020
Shakespeare and Beyond

Top 5 Folger Finds of 2020

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Revisit the bright spots of 2020 by taking a look at some of our most popular #FolgerFinds posts on Instagram from the past year. Highlights from the Folger collection include a beautiful book binding, a striking costume design, and a…

Early modern sleep care: Recipes for restful sleep
Shakespeare and Beyond

Early modern sleep care: Recipes for restful sleep

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Author
Sasha Handley

Thomas Sheppey devoted several densely written pages of his 17th-century manuscript to the topic of sleep — how to trigger it, how to interrupt it, how to influence its depth and length, and even how to stop people talking in…

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