Finally, the author looks at editing and the perfection of the book over time (5), after which there is a conclusion and then a bibliography and index. After this comes a glance at the performance of Shakespeare's plays and how it often varied from what the First Folio showed (4).
#FOLIO MEANING SHAKESPEARE CODE#
This is then followed by a look at how some readers of Shakespeare's plays sought to use them as a code that had to be solved (3). Following this comes a look at how the book was read through the marks that were left in owned copies and various marginalia (2). After that the author spends a lot of time discussing the ownership of the First Folio over the course of the last four centuries (1). The book begins with acknowledgements, a note on the texts, as well as a list of illustrations, and then begins with an introduction that discusses the earliest known purchase of the First Folio and what that means in terms of the original customers of the book and how long it took for the First Folio to be an item that was collected apart from the audience of those who liked to read plays and watch them performed in the theater. This book is about 350 pages long or so and is divided into five chapters. So long as you can relate and appreciate that, this book can be appreciated itself. When a book has been around for centuries there are different ways to look at it, and this book chooses to look at the First Folio as an artifact that people do things with more than as a book to be read and savored and enjoyed. When the author is able to focus on things that are present within reality and not her own fevered imagination, there are interesting elements to the book such as the author's desire to look at provenance and the way in which the transfer of a book from a used book of little value to a collectible incentivizes theft and fraud, and how the author discusses the way in which these things occur.
There are interesting parts of books here, but the author just is not able to put them together and her own focus on certain aspects of class and property tend to drag the book down with leftist politicking. In reading this book I was struck by the way that this could have been so much better of a book than what it was had the author come at this task with a different perspective. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognize Shakespeare. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying closeĪttention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. 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.
_0_folio%2Bsociety%2Bshakespeare.jpg "folio meaning shakespeare")
This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare's reception and the history of the book. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of their place in different contexts with different priorities. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. 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. This is a biography of a the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio.
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