Booking and details
Plan your visitDates Fri, Feb 21 – July 2025
Venue Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall
Tickets Free; timed-entry pass recommended
Social climbing was a competitive sport in Tudor England, requiring a complex range of skills, strategies, and techniques. How to Be a Power Player: Tudor Edition invites you into a world of lace ruffs, jousting, hawks, bad handwriting, scandal, and political factions. Experience the playbooks, the people, and the spectacular fails, as courtiers tried to navigate the minefield of working for a boss who could shower you with riches or chop off your head.
The exhibition features more than 60 objects from the Folger’s collection to demonstrate the “rules” for how to be a successful courtier. They show how historical and literary figures ranging from royal advisors to household staff used cunning, cutthroat, and creative means to acquire power and curry favor with the Tudor monarchs.
Take the Tudor playbook and give it a 21st-century spin! Visit the Engagement Table in the exhibition gallery to create a playbook that highlights the risks you might take to become a power player. Draw your portrait, design a dinner menu, and come up with your own rule.
On view
Explore selected highlights from the exhibition.
Portrait miniatures
As tokens of loyalty and affection, portrait miniatures were an intimate way to further one’s agenda. Power players commissioned Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, the most talented and sought-after miniaturists in England, to paint these exquisitely detailed portraits, often set in locket-like gold frames. They were to be viewed privately, rather than hung on a wall for all to see.
Knights of the Garter
Becoming a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter was one of the highest honors you could receive in Tudor England. Sir Gilbert Dethick, as Garter King of Arms, was responsible for the ceremonial aspects of the order. These velvet-bound books, gifted by him to Queen Elizabeth I, included the coats of arms of the Knights of the Garter.
Playbooks
To be a power player in Tudor England, you needed to study the playbooks. Potential senior advisors to the queen studied “courtesy books” and “mirrors for princes”, which described the qualities, skills, and behaviors necessary to succeed at court.
Books on view include a copy of Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince printed in 1584 in London, a political treatise that tells leaders how to gain and retain power.
Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier
This was the definitive 16th-century book of manners, advising society’s elite how to dress, behave, and even dance. The Book of the Courtier introduced the concept of sprezzatura, or how to make hard things look easy—a sort of effortless grace in speech, writing, dress, manners, and actions. First published in Italy in 1528, it became a bestseller.
Global power players
The Tudor court was like a consulate, frequented by merchants, ambassadors, and diplomats from around the world. It was also like a newsroom, with flurries of international letters, gifts, and dispatches sent and received. These connections were key to the crown’s ability to stay relevant, manage reputations, and expand English influence—as well as English pocketbooks—on a global scale.
Matoaka, also known as Pocahontas
Powhatan representative (approximately 1595–1617)
The beloved child of leader Wahunsenacawh, Matoaka helped her people communicate, negotiate, and trade with English colonizers at James Fort in Virginia. Kidnapped by the English, Matoaka faced a series of painful choices and circumstances. After converting to Christianity and marrying an Englishman, Matoaka was sent to London. Celebrated at James’s court, she met and spoke with mariners and merchants who hoped to enrich themselves on American trade. Her time in England was short—she died within a year of her arrival—but impactful. This image of Matoaka circulated widely in England as a loose print. She is dressed as an English gentlewoman.
Curator
Heather Wolfe is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She is currently writing a book on early modern stationery in England. She has published widely on topics such as early modern women’s manuscripts, writing tables, filing holes, letterwriting practices, Shakespeare’s coat of arms, rag collectors, and hybrid books. She teaches paleography (how to read old handwriting) for the Folger Institute and is leading an ongoing project to transcribe all of the Folger’s manuscripts. She curated the online resources Shakespeare Documented and Early Modern Manuscripts Online and was co-director of the Mellon-funded project Before Farm to Table. With Julie Fisher and Sara Powell, she created the virtual paleographical escape room, The Ghost of Blithfield Hall, which has been played by hundreds of budding paleographers.
I hope visitors see the parallels between Tudor England and today. Cancel culture, brand management, nepotism, power dressing, and the idea of “fake it ’til you make it” were all a part of life for people seeking a position in the queen’s inner circle.
Heather Wolfe, Curator of Manuscripts
Related programs
Family Workshop: The Art of the Shakespearean Power Player
DIY at the Folger: Miniatures
Family Workshop: A Power Player Spectacle
DIY at the Folger: The Tudor Ruff
Additional exhibition credits
Amanda Herbert, Associate Professor (Early Modern Americas) in the Department of History, University of Durham
Co-curator of “Into the Vault” section
David McKenzie, Head of Exhibitions
Kristen Sieck, Exhibitions Coordinator
Renate Mesmer, J. Franklin Mowery Head of Conservation and Preservation
Rachel Bissonnette, Book and Paper Conservator
Kathryn Kenney, Book and Paper Conservator
Charlotte Starnes, Conservation Intern
Rebecca Niles, Digital Developer
Jessica Frazier, Editorial Consultant
Design: Topos Graphics
Fabrication: Capitol Museum Services
Printing: EPI Colorspace