Booking and details
Dates Fri, Oct 25 Doors at 6pm, Trivia at 7pm
Venue The Great Hall and the Reading Room
Tickets $25
Without alchemy there would be no mixology. No cocktails, no spirits, no liqueurs! We’ll explore esoteric views, search for the fifth essence, and lean in on the hot debate—can lead be turned into gold?
Join us in the Great Hall at 6pm to enjoy a free Mixology cocktail and Tarot reading with Skye Marinda Tarot, included with your ticket!
Trivia will begin at 7pm in the Reading Room. Food and additional drinks will be available for purchase.
Please note that our original date has changed! This event will now take place on Friday, October 25, 2024, from 6-9pm ET
Trivia
Show us your knowledge (and learn a few fun facts along the way)! Trivia teams may have up to six people; bring your own team or meet new friends to form a team at the event!
- Round 1: Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Round 2: All’s Well That’s Alchemy
- Round 3: Artfully Horrific
- Round 4: Black Magic Woman
- Round 5: Occulting Across Borders
- Round 6: Digging Up Bones
Winning teams will receive gift certificates to the Folger Shop!
Costume Contest
Dress to impress! Costumes will be judged fashion show style from 6-7pm. Judges will award points for originality, level of effort, and presentation. Categories include:
- Alchemy-Inspired
- Scariest
- Group Costume
- Best Overall
In choosing a costume, we ask that all attendees be respectful in their creative choices and avoid outfits that could be deemed culturally insensitive. The Folger Shakespeare Library reserves the right to require any individual wearing such a costume to leave without a refund.
Trivia Master
Horacio Sierra
Horacio Sierra is a Professor of English at Bowie State University, Maryland’s oldest HBCU. His research and teaching interests include Renaissance literature and culture, popular culture, and Hispanic literature and culture.
About Folger Institute
The Folger Institute is a center for early modern research at the Folger Shakespeare Library that brings public audiences together with researchers to explore the cultures and legacies of the early modern world. Learn more.
Event Sponsor
Folger Institute’s “Mixology” series
Alchemy, aqua vitae, and Mixology: How alchemy gave us liquor
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.
High spirits: Alchemy in Elizabethan England
Jennifer Rampling, a Princeton history professor and author of The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700, explores alchemy in Shakespeare’s England.
Shax it Off: Taylor Swift-themed cocktails inspired by recipes in our collection
Three Taylor Swift-themed cocktails inspired by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century recipes from our collection.
Taylor Swift and Shakespeare
“Lend me your ears”: Harvard English professor Stephanie Burt explores the songs and songwriting of Shakespeare and Taylor Swift.
Four Cocktails Inspired by the Folger Collection
Learn more about—and how to make!—the four cocktails featured at Folger Institute’s upcoming Mixology event.
The coriander connection: Brain health in early modern English recipes and Ayurvedic practices today
An Ayurvedic doctor explores resonances between traditional Indian medicine and an early modern English recipe in the Folger collection that prescribes coriander to “helpe the memorie.”
"To preserve the memorie": Cocktails inspired by the Folger Collection
The Folger Institute has partnered with two DC mixologists to bring you cocktail and mocktail recipes featuring the key memory-enhancing ingredient from Mrs. Baker’s recipe book: coriander.
Recipes to remember: Coriander, gallyngale, and the legacies of the lost
The Receipt Book of Margaret Baker, compiled in 1675, contains a recipe for a memory-potion called “Confect of Coriander Seed.”
Love-in-idleness, Part Two: Intoxicating botanicals in 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'
Love-in-idleness, a flower also called pansy or heartsease, plays an important role in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” as Marissa Nicosia explores.
Love-in-idleness, Part One: Adapting an early modern recipe for heartsease cordial
Marissa Nicosia adapts an early modern recipe for heartsease cordial. This purple pansy syrup was used to “clear the heart” – to treat the chest and lungs or to reduce fever – but also for healing heartaches.
Assistive listening devices
Our assistive listening devices, which work with headphones or with T-Coil wireless transmission, are available at no extra charge.