Top Folger Finds on Instagram in 2021: Shakespeare books
Calling all book lovers! Some of our most popular #FolgerFinds posts on Instagram this year featured beautiful bindings of Shakespeare’s collected works or early editions of Shakespeare plays that may have slightly different plot elements than the versions we’ve come…
Miniature models of the Globe—with Folger connections
There is a long tradition of attempting to reconstruct the 1599 Globe, the multi-level open-air playhouse where many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. It will always be difficult to determine various details about the 1599 Globe, which burned to…
Folger Finds: Edwin Booth's royal tunic
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.