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What lost Turk plays can tell us about Shakespeare’s England and about ourselves
Osman II
Shakespeare and Beyond

What lost Turk plays can tell us about Shakespeare’s England and about ourselves

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Author
Murat Öğütcü

The study of extant early modern plays is a painstaking business that moves along a fine line of conjectural and historicist study. With the advent of the Lost Plays Database in 2009, scattered primary and secondary materials have been brought…

Excerpt - "Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes: Shakespeare in 1619, Bibliography in the Longue Durée" by Zachary Lesser
Edward Gwynn’s set of Pavier Quartos
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt - "Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes: Shakespeare in 1619, Bibliography in the Longue Durée" by Zachary Lesser

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

What’s the most influential book for Shakespeare scholarship? The First Folio of 1623 immediately comes to mind for many. However, there’s another book, less famous but still incredibly important for Shakespeare scholars: Edward Gwynn’s set of Pavier Quartos, found in…

Translating Shakespeare’s plays into Persian
Shakespeare and Beyond

Translating Shakespeare’s plays into Persian

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

Iranian professor and Shakespeare scholar Ali Salami has used the Folger Shakespeare’s freely available digital texts to translate almost all of the works of Shakespeare into Persian. Read a Q&A with Salami about his translation work.

The curious and complicated case of Locrine
Shakespeare and Beyond

The curious and complicated case of Locrine

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Author
Alexandra E. LaGrand

The curious and complicated history of the 16th-century play “The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine” prompts interesting conversations about the Shakespeare canon and its apocrypha.

Early modern sleep care: Recipes for restful sleep
Shakespeare and Beyond

Early modern sleep care: Recipes for restful sleep

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Author
Sasha Handley

Thomas Sheppey devoted several densely written pages of his 17th-century manuscript to the topic of sleep — how to trigger it, how to interrupt it, how to influence its depth and length, and even how to stop people talking in…

“More strange than true”: Finding America among the fairies
Shakespeare and Beyond

“More strange than true”: Finding America among the fairies

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Author
Victoria Muñoz

“I have had a most rare vision…” Bottom’s words in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” echo the language of Spanish conquistadors describing Aztec Mexico.

BECOMING OTHELLO! A gender-flipped journey onstage and in the archive
Shakespeare and Beyond

BECOMING OTHELLO! A gender-flipped journey onstage and in the archive

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Author
Debra Ann Byrd

Debra Ann Byrd writes about encountering an early female Othello in the Folger collection and developing her memoir and solo show, Becoming Othello.

Translating the Chinese classic 'The Peony Pavilion' with a 'Shakespearean flavor'
The Peony Pavilion
Shakespeare and Beyond

Translating the Chinese classic 'The Peony Pavilion' with a 'Shakespearean flavor'

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Author
Esther French

The Peony Pavilion. “Kunqu performance at Peking University.” Wikimedia Commons / Antonis SHEN / CC BY-SA 2.0 Could Chinese literature be more popular with English-speaking audiences if translators favored words, phrases and poetic forms that spark associations with Shakespeare? This…

Small Latin and Less Greek: A Look at the Inkhorn Controversy
a photograph of a page in a dictionary
Shakespeare and Beyond

Small Latin and Less Greek: A Look at the Inkhorn Controversy

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Author
Sara Schliep

The Inkhorn Controversy in the 15th and 16th centuries focused on the use of long, Latinate words as opposed to shorter, Saxon-rooted English counterparts.

A Guide to Ladies: Hannah Woolley's missing book emerges from the archives
A Guide to Ladies by Hannah Woolley
Shakespeare and Beyond

A Guide to Ladies: Hannah Woolley's missing book emerges from the archives

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Author
David B. Goldstein

One of Hannah Woolley’s books has sat hidden in plain sight at the Folger since 1990—included in the Folger online catalog, but missing from an international database that scholars often use to search for early English books. It is the…

In the News: In Rare Books, Centuries-Old Proteins Can Reveal the Past
Sample of book dust being removed from 17th-century Bible. Folger Shakespeare Library.
Shakespeare and Beyond

In the News: In Rare Books, Centuries-Old Proteins Can Reveal the Past

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

Recent news about proteomics (the study of proteins) in the humanities has included a Folger Shakespeare Library project, irreverently called Project Dustbunny, that studies proteins in rare books to learn about those who once handled or read them.

Savory biscuits from a 17th-century recipe
Savory Cogs Biscuits. All photography by Brittany Diliberto. www.beetwosweet.com
Shakespeare and Beyond

Savory biscuits from a 17th-century recipe

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Author
Elisa Tersigni Jack Bouchard

Interested in adding variety to your Thanksgiving dinner? Try this modernized 17th-century recipe for savory biscuits based on a manuscript in the Folger collection.

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