Early modern life

In an excerpt from Grace Tiffany’s imaginative novel, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, we meet Judith Shakespeare at age 61, a midwife-apothecary in war-torn 17th-century England on the run to avoid arrest for witchcraft.

Go behind the scenes of our exhibition, Little Books, Big Gifts: The Artistry of Esther Inglis. 400 years after her death, Inglis “can still make the whole place shimmer.”

Immerse yourself in the magic of the Folger and the early modern world with our new game “A Night at the Library” paired with recipes for two conjuring cocktails to enhance playing.

In early modern England, New Year’s Day was celebrated with a long-standing custom of giving gifts to the monarch. Each gift was carefully recorded on “gift rolls.” What were the top gifts in 1539 and 1585?

Flowers, bugs, birds, frogs—all and more are found in the manuscripts of Esther Inglis (1570?–1624) now on display in Little Books, Big Gifts, a special Folger exhibition highlighting her artistry with pen and brush.

Erika T. Lin studies early modern holidays and her work has yielded some surprising revelations—not only about the festivities themselves, but about the relationship between holidays and what we now think of as “theater.”

Without alchemy there would be no mixology. No cocktails, no spirits, no liqueurs, no essences! Dive into the history of alchemy and distillation, with two cocktail recipes.

Jennifer Rampling, a Princeton history professor and author of The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700, explores alchemy in Shakespeare’s England.

An excerpt from Reading the River in Shakespeare’s Britain surveys some of the cultural roles of rivers, including how Shakespeare mentioned them in his plays.

Greg Prickman explains how news of the 1623 book we now call the  First Folio appeared a year earlier, on the occasion of a trade fair in Frankfurt, Germany.

Shakespeare’s plays are full of sports and games. Test your knowledge with these questions.

Tabitha Stanmore tells the story of a 15th-century widow hiring a magic practitioner in this excerpt from her book “Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic.”