In the past we’ve spoken of the ideal Shakespeare collection to carry around with you, particularly on a digital device. Well, Oxford University has just provided us a new and exciting offering by providing free EPUB versions of the 36 original First Folio texts:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=400639473

I’ve literally just started pulling these down in the last few minutes so I haven’t had a chance to really let it sink in. Unfortunately due to the nature of the medium, they’ve basically translated the original to a usable font and what you end up left with looks like a badly spelled version of what you read in high school.

What I’m still hoping for one of these days is for someone to properly combine scans of the images, with the ability to treat them as text – copy and paste, highlight, search, all that good stuff. But I think that when we lose the original images, where we can no longer see the line breaks and such and fully appreciate the flow of the whole, it’s just not the same.

Still, though! A step in the right direction!

The headline when I spotted it read, Book dealer who defaced copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio… and I clicked on it, thinking “Please be ‘savagely beaten in prison’ please be ‘savagely beaten in prison.'”
Nope.
“Working in prison library.”
Oh, sure, that makes sense. After all, he’s an authority on great literature. :-/

I won’t begin to summarize Paul Edmondson’s blog post entitled “Extinguishing Shakespeare’s Sonnets”, you really need to go read it for yourself. In it he reviews Don Paterson’s Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A New Commentary. And, well….. he didn’t like it. And I can see why.
A few snippets to get your dander up before you go read the original. And remember, these are Paterson’s words, not Edmondson’s:
‘This isn’t a great poem’ (Sonnet 2);
‘Another dull one’ (Sonnet 10);
‘Not much to see here, folks’ (Sonnet 41);
‘I’d cheerfully send this one into the unanthologised dark‘ (Sonnet 68);
… and so on. That’s only a brief snip of the examples given in the post, which in itself is only a summary of the larger work. I think Paul actually shows a great deal of restraint in his view – he sounds more sad than angry, that a new collection like this could’ve been cause for celebration, and instead it is just a bitter disappointment.
(Somebody hold catkins back! The man’s a doctor, he’s got access to sharp instruments.)

Here’s an interesting story – an old Shakespeare text from 1977 has been found with scribbled notes in the margins that have been authenticated as those of Princess Diana The play? The Tempest. There’s also apparently some math notes, and she weren’t so good at da math.
I’m not sure what’s more sad, though – her handwriting, her grasp of math, or the article’s sad emphasis on pocket change: ‘Being a Yorkshireman, my father always checked what people had thrown out in case it was worth a few bob.” And then later, “‘I’m shocked and delighted it’s worth so much. I’m going to sell it at the right auction and at the right time.’” Absolutely – you’ve found a piece of history. Sell it as fast as you can.
Also interesting is that it’s only worth about 1500 British pounds, which is somewhere around $2000US. At that price I think I’d keep it. What am I going to do when I sell it, buy a television? That’d make fun dinner conversation. “Oh, like the new high def? Yeah, I sold a piece of British history for it.”

Regular readers know that I’ll often sing “Shakespeare songs” to my kids as lullabies. I know two — Sonnet 18, which I originally heard put to music by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd (and used to use as my cellphone ringtone), and “What A Piece of Work Is Man” from the HAIR soundtrack.
So last night I crawl into bed with the 4yr old. “Daddy sing you a song?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“What song should I sing?”
“Shakespeare,” he said
“Which one?” I asked
“William,” he answered.
…
You know that thing that fish do when you take them out of the water, how the little mouth just sort of opens and closes and nothing really comes out? I had one of those moments. It took me a good number of seconds to shake it off and regain myself. “Which Shakespeare song,” I asked more clearly.
“The one about the guy? With the skeleton? And he talks to it?”
“Hamlet?”
“Yeah, Hamlet.”
Ah, back to reality. 🙂