FOLIO MEANING SHAKESPEARE ARCHIVE
FOLIO MEANING SHAKESPEARE SERIES

The Folger Shakespeare Library, famous for its collection of 82 First Folios, also owns 58 copies of the Second Folio.īut what is a folio and what makes it so special? Folios are large books comprised of pages that have only been folded once before being gathered into quires (four sheets of paper folded to form eight leaves) that are then stacked and sewn together. No definite census can be found reporting the number of Second Folio copies printed, but in 1990 there were 178 Second Folios in libraries in the United States, as well as several more in international libraries (Otness, 65). (Please watch this video from Peter Harrington Booksellers to learn more about the Smethwick version of the Second Folio.) Click on this image to the right to see a close-up of the watermark in a page of our Smethwick Second Folio.

Willamette’s copy of the Second Folio was printed for John Smethwick, which is one of the rarest versions of this work. John Smethwick held the copyright for Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Taming of the Shrew. Each of these publishers owned the copyrights to different plays written by Shakespeare. Thomas Cotes printed all the copies of the Second Folio for five different publishers: John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, Richard Meighen, and Robert Allot. Of the 750 copies printed, only 235 copies of the First Folio remain today.īy 1632, William Jaggard and Edward Blount had died, and the copies of the First Folio had sold out. Typesetting issues are one of the factors that differentiate the Second Folio from its famous sibling, the First Folio, printed in 1623, by William Jaggard for Edward Blount, John Smethwick, and William Aspley. The “hieroglyphics” were 17th century typesetting, which even 21st century students struggle to read. This is how Betsy Perry started her article, “ Vault Harbors $1000 Book,” in the Januissue of the Willamette Collegian about the library’s valuable rare books.

“Pardon me sir, but are you referring to that copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio which you have in your hand?”

FOLIO MEANING SHAKESPEARE SERIES

As part of our Shakespeare Folio Translation Project, we ran a series of workshops for Chinese translators, actors and directors as part of Wuzhen Theatre Festival in October 2017.Humanities & Fine Arts Librarian, those crazy hieroglyphics!” This long history of actual theatre practice, and our practical understanding of the challenges arising from these 400-year-old texts, will guarantee that the translations are theatrically effective to a modern audience.

FOLIO MEANING SHAKESPEARE ARCHIVE

We also draw on our archive of different production edits (including cuts, textual transpositions, and doubling or combining of characters) going back over 50 years. This is a new approach to translating Shakespeare's dramatic language.Īfter being in the RSC rehearsal room, the Chinese theatre makers and translators can mirror the process in China, where possible under the direction of a RSC Associate Director. The new translations from English to Mandarin transform the meaning, tone, character and volume of the language, as well as the theatrical rhythm and momentum. Together they unpick the clues about meaning, character and pacing that Shakespeare put into the text that have been ignored in previous translations. Instead of simply engaging a translator to work with the text, we invite a company of actors, directors and playwrights from the UK and China to work with us in our rehearsal rooms. Our translation process draws on our unique expertise and resources to ensure the new translations are grounded in theatre practice, and will provide countless future opportunities for performance and interpretation.

Folio meaning shakespeare