Skip to main content
All 49 posts on

Folger Exhibitions

Documenting the life of an icon: Shakespeare at 400 years
Shakespeare and Beyond

Documenting the life of an icon: Shakespeare at 400 years

Posted
Author
Esther French

Shakespeare, Life of an Icon, the first of four special exhibitions at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2016, offers a fresh and intimate perspective on William Shakespeare as the London playwright, bestselling poet, and man from Stratford. This once-in-a-lifetime assemblage shares…

'Shakespeare Documented' online resource launches
Shakespeare and Beyond

'Shakespeare Documented' online resource launches

Posted
Author
Esther French

The diary of physician and vicar John Ward contains the only known account of Shakespeare’s death. On March 6, 1662/63 he writes, “Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died…

“Extravagantly Large Paper”
Collation

“Extravagantly Large Paper”

Posted
Author
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…

Fall Round-up for Early Modern Manuscripts Online
Collation

Fall Round-up for Early Modern Manuscripts Online

Posted
Author
Paul Dingman Sarah Powell

Over the past few months, EMMO has been busy with several first-ever activities connected to transcribing manuscripts at the Folger. In August, we transcribed excerpts from over twenty four manuscripts currently exhibited in the Age of Lawyers Exhibition (running until…

Constructing volvelles
Collation

Constructing volvelles

Posted
Author
Sarah Werner

As Elizabeth Bruxer correctly identified within a few short hours of its posting, this month’s crocodile mystery showed the inner disc of an unconstructed volvelle from a copy of the 1591 edition of Giambattista della Porta’s De furtivis literarum  notis (STC…

Folger Talks Preview: Kathryn Will and Shakespeare's Coat of Arms
Folger Spotlight

Folger Talks Preview: Kathryn Will and Shakespeare's Coat of Arms

Posted
Author
Katharine Pitt

Dear Folger Diary Readers, Minions of the Moon, Fellows in Arms, and Excellent Good Friends, I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it… With the 2013-2014 Folger Season at an end and the 2014-2015 Season not yet…

William Dethick and the Shakespeare Grants of Arms
Collation

William Dethick and the Shakespeare Grants of Arms

Posted
Author
Nigel Ramsay

A guest post by Nigel Ramsay For many visitors to the Folger’s Heraldry exhibit, “Symbols of Honor,” the stars will be the three original draft grants on paper of Shakespeare’s coats of arms. These belong to the English heralds’ long-established…

An argent lion rampant: coats of arms in 17th-c. books
Collation

An argent lion rampant: coats of arms in 17th-c. books

Posted
Author
Goran Proot

In recent months, the Folger Shakespeare Library added a rare emblem book to its holdings, a thin quarto bound in pasteboards holding 24 unnumbered leaves . The emblem book presents itself as a “new year’s gift” containing 13 engravings: one coat…

Timon of Athens: nine not-actually-lost drawings by Wyndham Lewis
Collation

Timon of Athens: nine not-actually-lost drawings by Wyndham Lewis

Posted
Author
Erin Blake

In 1998, modernist art and literature scholar Paul Edwards wrote about “a set of watercolours and (apparently) ink drawings on the theme of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens” by Wyndham Lewis that had been published as a portfolio in 1913. Paul Edwards, “Wyndham…

A peek into the Conservation Lab
Collation

A peek into the Conservation Lab

Posted
Author
The Collation

Ever wonder what the conservators are up to on our third floor? Here’s a peek into what’s happening in the Werner Gundersheimer Conservation Laboratory this month: The team is in full treatment mode for the Library’s upcoming exhibition, “Symbols of Honor: Heraldry…

Where do family trees come from?
Collation

Where do family trees come from?

Posted
Author
Heather Wolfe

Why is a tree coming out of this dozing man’s belly, you may ask. When I began working on the Folger’s next exhibition, Symbols of honor: Family history and genealogy in Shakespeare’s England (July 1 to October 26, 2014), I wondered…

Something borrowed . . .
Collation

Something borrowed . . .

Posted
Author
Caryn Lazzuri Georgianna Ziegler

Georgianna: Did you ever wonder why or how we borrow items to show in our exhibitions at the Folger? Let’s use the upcoming “Shakespeare’s Sisters: Women Writers, 1500-1700,” opening on February 2, 2012, as an example. My colleague Caryn Lazzuri…

1 2 3 4 5