Day in the Museum: Part Two, Shakespeare’s First Folio

I just happened to be watching the news the other night when I heard something that immediately caught my attention…

Stratford, Ontario is a short drive from me and known as a lovely quaint tourist town, the claim to its fame being Stratford Festival. There they are known for their elaborate and brilliant performances of some of Shakespeare’s best-known and well-loved plays.

Celebrating the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, The Stratford Festival arranged to display something of great value in honour of the occasion. This item was so valuable that it was only at the museum for two days. It only arrived as people lined up to see it Saturday morning and, according to the museum employee at the entrance to the exhibit, would be leaving not at five, but at ten minutes to five.

William Shakespeare’s First Folio is the first book of his plays, published by his friends and fellow members of The Chamberlain’s Men: John Heminge and Henry Condell. It was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death; before that it was common to find fraudulent versions in circulation.

What’s a folio you ask…well I will tell you because I honestly didn’t know myself, until recently: Folio is Latin for leaf:

“Usually means a leaf in a manuscript. But in printers’ jargon it had another sense: it referred to page size more than one page was printed at the same time on a single large sheet of paper, which was then folded into pages. When the sheet was folded once to form two leaves, making four pages, the page and book size was described as folio. A folio page is usually about 38 centimetres (15 inches) tall.”

Driving into the parking lot of the museum – a police security presence was obvious. This was serious stuff, not that they had any fear of me attempting a theft of such an artifact. I am not that gutsy, but imagine if I had pulled that off? Sounds like a good idea for a story, just fiction of course.

We arrived at a good time, a lull in the lineup. Only ten people were being permitted in the room at one time. I was glad to hear that cameras were allowed inside, but no flash was permitted. Any direct bright light could damage this centuries old document. Anything to be done to prevent fading of the writing of this special piece of literature was being done.

On entering I heard the hushed conversations of the other people and a humming of what turned out to be a dehumidifier. This book needed to be in just the right environment, which included temperature and lighting. It couldn’t be too humid and any lights were not aimed directly at or on it.

I tried to take in my surroundings then. I knew it could turn out to be rather pointless, me here to see some old book hidden in a case. What was I going to get out of this anyway?

A few old photos and the dresses worn in past performances of Shakespeare’s plays were on display in the room.

My knowledge of actress Maggie Smith is fairly recent, with her starring roles in the Harry Potter films and more recently still in Downton Abbey. This photo didn’t even look like her, according to my sister, but it was from her performance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1977 and that was almost thirty years ago.

The drawers in the cabinet held the separate pages of the folio. It was hard for me to comprehend and my sister read some of it to me, a lot made difficult by the old English writing. I felt like I was in a jewelry store, with the glass cabinets holding precious jewels. This time I was looking in at something so much more precious to me: words.

An introduction by fellow playwright, poet, and literary critic Ben Jonson. This was all taking me back to a time I can not possibly grasp. It’s hard to even imagine what it was like back in the seventeenth century, of which Shakespeare himself was only alive to see the first sixteen years. His plays were mostly written and performed in the final years of the 1500s, at the open-air playhouse The Globe Theatre, on the south bank of The thames.

 

Also in the room was a photo, included in the folio, of William Shakespeare himself. Recently, with the 450th anniversary, there has been a lot of debate about this likeness. Is it truly him?

 

The artist responsible was only fifteen when Shakespeare died so it is unlikely he knew the man, but more likely he knew people who did and must have seen a photograph from the time or had someone describe what Shakespeare looked like in life.

I find it almost impossible, even in the face of some of the most proven methods, to truly believe that any of this has survived or is the truth. That is the part of history that both baffles and enthrals me. I would love to own something as precious as a book from so long ago. Even hearing it explained how something made of paper with ink imprinted on the pages lasts centuries I can’t quite fathom how. The diaries I own of my grandmother are only barely fifty years old and already some of them are so worn and delicate. How does anything make it this far through time?

Luck must play a big part in this, but you simply can not discount the care someone must have taken over the years. On our way out I hear a voice speaking with authority, or with something like it. This voice sounds young, but unmistakably informed. I pause to listen and speak to her.

She is only a summer student here and she reiterates that she is no expert: “Just someone who enjoyed researching all this.”

Through something called
Young Canada Works
she was given this opportunity for the summer, and she had clearly already done the sort of research I was relieved of having to do myself.

Her knowledge as a student, receiving her Masters and her interest in rare old books was evident. I could feel her passion for the subject matter and I could see why. It was something like that which drew me to this museum to see this famous piece of English literature. Within hours it would be back to its home at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.

Finally, on my last post for this week I will speak about my trip upstairs in the museum to check out the World War exhibit.

Sources:

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/landprint/shakespeare/

http://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/about-us/brief-history-department

Day in the Museum: Part One, Four Senses

I spent this past Sunday afternoon surrounded by a lot of old things and one incredibly old book. This week I will break up my afternoon at the Stratford Perth Museum into three separate blog posts: today, Wednesday, and Friday.

The Stratford Perth Museum sits on seven acres, its present location, in a big old brick house. It is out of the town of Stratford a ways now, for the first time, when it moved away from the Stratford Festival and the flurry of excitement, to a more peaceful spot. In 2008 they felt they needed more space and made the move and the transition.

I had never heard of this museum, but I suppose I hadn’t really thought about it. I don’t spend as much time in museums as I wish I did. I think most people think of the town of Stratford for the Festival theatre, but there is a rich culture and history in the area. It felt like one however, on entering, but I tend to have my idiosyncrasies with these institutions.

I enter a world of previously owned or used things. I love the history and the mystery of these items I find myself surrounded by, but I am without the ability to appreciate these collections with my eyes. It is my other four senses (excluding taste because it really doesn’t apply here) that I’m left with.

Immediately I realize I probably won’t be able to touch these precious and often times delicate pieces. I assume, rightly from the start, that this Shakespeare folio will not be the exception. The woman who greets us confirms that for me, no doubt spotting the white cane in my hand.

I want to stress that I love history and to imagine where something has been and who may have owned or handled it in the past. I can’t explain my strange discomfort with old things, starting in my childhood and with my fear of pioneer villages on school trips.

I have been to Europe and I swore I wouldn’t miss out on anything truly memorable while there just because I was afraid of…I don’t know what (an experience for another day’s post.)

I do not see as I walk through the museum and these buildings are like libraries, in that there is a sense of hush on the place. That only leaves one more sense: smell.

Smell is such a strange thing to relay to others through words, but it fills me with so much sense memory.

Smell can be nostalgic and it can be distasteful. It can be a distraction for me, totally taking me out of the moment and away from what history and treasures I find myself surrounded by.

Our special exhibit priced tickets give us access to the entire museum and my sister locates things I could actually get a feel for by touching. I spent my time in the Shakespeare exhibit and, unable to feel anything, (I was left with a museum headache) trying to grasp in my mind and imagination, what others were seeing with their eyes.

Festival Treasures: Creating the Wild Kingdom

“The Stratford Perth Museum, in conjunction with the Stratford Festival, presents a special exhibition called Festival Treasures: Creating the Wild Kingdom, showcasing unique pieces from the festival archives.”

It’s here my sister tries to show me the props and masks for view. I feel the strange materials and plastics and she knows not to place my hand on anything made of fur. I have a reactionary reflex alive and well that takes control of my hand, but I tell myself silently to take it easy and not pull away so fast. I’m sure it still shows in my behaviour.

“This fun-filled safari explores inventive ways of bringing birds and beasts to the stage. It will feature costumes, props, design sketches, audiovisual material, documents and photographs to illustrate the process of creating pieces for festival productions of The Birds, Peter Pan, Alice Through the Looking Glass, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and many others.”

I am curious about how these items have all remained in such good conditions for so many decades, through countless performances and I speak to an Archiveist Assistant:

I work in the festival archives. I’ve worked for a long time in the festival but I only recently went to the archives, I was a stage manager before that. Stratford Festival has the largest theatrical archive in the world, devoted to one theatre.

I ask her about how these things have managed to survive for fifty or so years:

Purpose-built facility…climate-controlled atmosphere. Archival friendly tissue paper and acid-free boxes. It’s kept at the right humidity, that’s why it’s so cold in here.

How does this work with keeping all these items from past performances?

We have the advantage of having props and costumes. Most theatrical archives don’t have the room or the money.

We have all the asses heads from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the strawberry handkerchief from Othello, the casket from Merchant of Venice

We recently celebrated the sixty-second anniversary. Back in fifty-three we’re lucky there were people that were far-sighted enough to keep things, especially because they weren’t sure there was going to be a fifty-four season or a fifty-five season, let alone two-thousand-fourteen.
We started in a tent.

How much is kept?

We take two costumes and the main props from all the productions each year.

I ask her specifically about something from Shakespeare’s time period and how that survives:

Bugs, moisture, heat…those are your biggest problems.

For four hundred years it was okay in somebody’s house. In order for it to last that long…biggest thing is moisture and sunlight…just to keep things from fading. That’s why you keep the lights down. It’s quite extraordinary.

So what is one way costumes and props are preserved over the years, in the festival?

For things like sweat and body odour…the best thing is vodka. You spray the costumes with it.

All the blood, sweat, and tears that go into that…all those performances.

This museum was once someone’s home and is now an old house, storing old things. It now houses so much from a past long gone. In Shakespeare’s case, long long gone.

Next time I will write about the reason I went to the museum in the first place: Shakespeare’s First Folio.