Shakespeare's Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio: Chris Laoutaris

This is a richly gripping and illuminating picture of the process of the gathering and publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio. It manages to give a superbly vivid picture of life in England at this time from. We range from political crises, through power-jockeying at Court, to vivid and detailed pictures of book printing and publishing at that time as well as viciously entertaining spats between authors, printers and publishers.

I loved the insight into the actual practicalities of book printing at that time – a fascinating combination of the very mundane and highly skilled. I was also enormously entertained by the magnificent rhetoric of printer William Jaggard, and his takedown of Ralph Brooke over alleged printing inaccuracies in the latter’s A Catalogue and Succesion of the Kings. It made modern-day social media trolling seem very feeble and half-hearted!

The chapters on the ‘Spanish connection’ and the putative political/religious alliance  between Catholic Spain and Protestant England was as illuminating as it was fascinating. – that old adage ‘everything finally comes down to politics’.

Fascinated to hear about the ‘Shakespeare playing Prospero’ research of Professor Wiggins might suggest that this story is actually true. And it’s rather good that an apocryphal story like this, which everyone would like to be true, may actually turn out to be the case.

In terms of presentation, I much liked the use of bold for the comments/references in the body text that are given in the, helpfully paginated, chapter notes. It makes following up much easier.  I also appreciated the way that some additional information not in the body text appeared in the labels below the images in the text.

It’s a very emotionally and dramatically satisfying possibility that the man himself had some degree of planning involvement in this First Folio. A commendable sense of self-worth – and as Ben Jonson had done this, I wonder if S felt that ‘well, if Ben J can do this…’ – but I don’t know (do we know?) how he regarded Jonson as a dramatist?

And to conclude on a more personal note: I am always fascinated to read about the Folgers . When teaching in DC, I spent many happy hours there, at the theater, taking my school to participate in their annual Shakespeare Schools Festivals, and admiring their exemplarily curated exhibitions. I have not (yet) been back since the massive refurbishment. I always thought that if you have almost unlimited money, what a glorious way to spend it, rather than, say, building a rocket to go into space because of your phallic insecurities…