Shakespeare First Folio from Catholic College to Be Exhibited in London

The Catholic Herald (UK) ^ | 2/24/15 | David V Barret

[marshmallow]

A recently discovered First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays will be exhibited next year at the Globe Theatre

A recently discovered First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays will be exhibited next year – the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death – at the Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank.

The First Folio was discovered last November in a library in the small town of Saint-Omer, near Calais in northern France. A librarian came across it when he was preparing an exhibition of links between the area and England.

During the Elizabethan and Jacobean period many English Catholics escaped to France, and a college at Saint-Omer gave a Catholic education to English boys. The college was expelled from France in 1762 and moved first to Belgium and then in 1794 to Stonyhurst in Lancashire, where it remains today.

A spokesman for Stonyhurst College said: “Many precious medieval artefacts, illuminated manuscripts and books were taken with them, and survive at Stonyhurst to this day, but it seems that a slightly scruffy and dog-eared First Folio was overlooked and left behind.”

Some of the college’s books, including a 15th-century Gutenberg Bible, ended up in the town library in Saint-Omer. The presence of the First Folio at the Catholic college indicates, if nothing else, that Shakespeare’s work was well-regarded by Catholics at the time.

[Cowboy Bob]

Don’t they mean Frances Bacon?

[a fool in paradise]

Alternate Headline:
Celebrated bootleg text to be exhibited and studied...

http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/1002/032.html

Shakespeare’s works are known entirely from badly printed quartos and folios, none of which were authorized by the playwright, and no two of which are identical. Romeo and Juliet, to cite one example, appeared in three disparate quarto editions—all anonymous, each different from its fellows—before first appearing under Shakespeare’s name in the First Folio of 1623. The First Folio’s editors complained that the earlier editions of Shakespeare were nothing but “stolen, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealths of [the] injurious imposters, that exposed them” to the public. But the Folio editors published their edition seven years after the playwright’s death, and there is no evidence that they had previously consulted him. Indeed, according to Steven Urkowitz of the City College of New York, these editors—or someone else—rewrote 400 lines of King Lear, altering character, theme, and plot.

Many of the other plays fared no better. As a result, there is no master copy of Shakespeare’s work that can be compared with variants. The original, if it exists, has been swamped by mislabeled, badly produced junk copies. Shakespeare may be the English language’s most celebrated dramatist, but nobody knows what he actually wrote.

[CaptainK]

Interesting article.

[a fool in paradise]

There’s a lot more background in the book on bootleg recordings (I think it is title Bootleg, the history of the other record industry).

Persons transcribed Shakespeare’s plays from the crowd. Some saw print illicitly while William was still alive. What came out as First Folio was released 7 years after his death (with no evidence of approval or source).

Later, the US did not recognize foreign copyright (much as China feels today) and bootlegs of books and sheet music occurred.

The book eventually gets into persons recording opera in NYC and releasing clandestine albums.

[SunkenCiv]

This topic was posted 2/24/2015, thanks marshmallow.