The British Library

 Today we visited the British Library! There were many cool things to see in the exhibition that we walked through, but my favorite things to look at were the Shakespeare Folios and the Quartos of Hamlet and Richard III. After taking Shakespeare's Later Works with Dr. Orvis in the spring and being on this trip, I have a much larger appreciation for Shakespeare and his plays. One thing about the folios that I think is fascinating is that without them we would have lost many of his plays, including my favorite play of his; Measure for Measure! 

The First Folio. 


After seeing Richard III at the Globe this past Friday, I have a much larger appreciation for Shakespeare's tragedies and how some of them were written. For example, I have learned on this trip that when Shakespeare wrote Richard III, he wrote it in such a way that Queen Elizabeth I would have approved of and enjoyed given the strict rules about play text and theater at the time. After learning that, I am interested to know how Shakespeare wrote other characters within his plays, specifically his tragedies. 

Richard III Quarto.


In our reading assigned for today, we read an essay titled "What Is Your Text?" This essay explained the history of printing Shakespeare's work in the Folios and the Quartos, and how often they were misprinted. This essay also explained why there are many different Quarto versions of plays such as Hamlet. For those that do not know why, it is because there were many different written texts of his plays and we may never know which version is the 'true' or 'correct' version. When at the British Library I was able to see what is called a "Bad Quarto" of Hamlet, where the famous soliloquy is different from how we know it today. 


My questions that I have today are: 

1) How many of Shakespeare's plays were used as political propaganda in the Renaissance Era? We know for a fact that Richard III was written the way it was to appease Queen Elizabeth I, but were his other tragedies written for similar reasons? When Shakespeare was writing these plays, did he have specific people in mind that he was writing them for? And were the characters written based solely on his memory, or did he collaborate with others when coming up with such developed and complex characters? 


2) Though we will never know which version of Hamlet is the version that Shakespeare intended to have as his "final copy", do you think that Shakespeare would approve of how plays such as Hamlet are being performed today? Of his works that have multiple versions, how was it determined which version would be popularized? 

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