Following up on some recent threads, here’s a question.  A friend, maybe a coworker, somebody you know casually but not well, asks your opinion on a Shakespeare performance that is in town.  Specifically they ask, “Is it worth going?” What do you say?  Do you ever give Shakespeare a bad as in “Don’t go” review? While As You Like It is in town, several coworkers have asked for my review.  I find myself pained to give an actual go-or-dont-go answer to the question, because the idea of saying “No, don’t go to Shakespeare” is something that can’t really come out of my mouth.  I realize that it’s not for everybody, sure.  But the idea that somebody would choose to not see it at all, based on my opinion, is not really cool with me.  Some exposure to Shakespeare, even if you don’t like it, is better than none.

For the really curious, here’s a list of books they’re showing at the exhibit:

• A First Folio

• Q1 A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Q1 Merchant of Venice
• Q1 Richard II
• “False Folio” Henry V  (I was unclear from the description exactly what this one’s story was)
• Q2 Hamlet
• 
• ??  Lear (no specific mention, the writeup speaks only of the conflated quarto/folio editions)
• Q1 Much Ado About Nothing, showcasing where the actor Kemp’s name appears in the script instead of Dogberry.
• “Bad Quarto” Pericles, not quite sure what that means
• Benson’s collection of Shakespeare’s Poems (1640), which included some of the sonnets where he apparently changed the pronouns to something more appropriate so that the man would be addressing a woman
• A Third Folio (1664), which includes a number of apocryphal plays including Sir John Oldcastle, and Thomas Lord Cromwell.

• Pope’s 1725 Complete Works (in Six Volumes)

• A handwritten David Garrick (1756) where he has created his own prologue to Winter’s Tale, in which he claims that to remove the first three acts of the play is “to lose no drop of that immortal man.”
• Zachariah Jackson’s 1818 publication on correcting some “700 errors in Shakespeare’s plays.”
• An illustrated Oxford edition from 1770, opened to showcase Lear, III.6
• Illustrated Songs of Shakespeare from 1843, showing As You Like It IV.2
• Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1513
• Geneva Bible, 1560
• Holinshed’s Chronicles, 1587
• Don Quixote, 1620 (English translation)
  
• As in my previous post, two Samuel Johnsons, and an illustrated edition from America in the 1800s

I think I was most in awe of the Quartos, which contained tiny little details I’d never thought, like how each had a specific printing such as “1598,Valentine Simmes for Andrew Wise, and to be sold at his shop in Paules Churchyard at the sign of the angel.”  Or the “foul” version of Ado that shows Kemp’s name.  I don’t understand why it’s not taken more seriously, I kept hoping somebody would come over and want to talk to me about the different pieces.  Maybe that’s more for museums than libraries, I suppose.

UPDATE 8/17/2008: I’ve just been in touch with Scott Maisano, the professor from UMass Boston who set up the exhibit.  I asked him about the “mistake” I found, and he clarified how it happened.  After the cards were printed and as the exhibit was being set up, a grad student found another copy of the Samuel Johnson (the 1795 Philadelphia).  They did not have time to print a new card, but did not want to leave the book out, so they put it in the case alongside its 1802 Boston cousin.  Scott tells me that they’ll be reprinting the card :).

Just got back from the BPL where I took a bunch of notes and pictures (albeit with my cellphone), I’ll try to put those up when I have more time.  I want to tell a better story. I’m about ready to leave, and I ask the librarian if this is all the Shakespeare material, motioning around me to the wall cases.  She says yes. 

As I’m leaving I walk past a very large standalone case and spot a picture of Caliban.  Sure enough, I’d missed a case.  “You forgot to mention this one,” I tell her with no small glare.  She doesn’t seem to care. There are three books in the case, which is titled “Coming To the USA”. 

One is a very large illustrated volume (where Caliban came from), but I don’t care all that much about it because we’ve had a few hundred years for people to do their own versions; there’s nothing really special about that one to me.

Sharing the case, though, are two smaller volumes with the name Samuel Johnson on them.  Now I’m interested. Particularly because only one of them is documented.  “Odd,” I think, “But I suppose they are just two different versions of the same book.”  Except, in rare books, are any two really the same?

The documented one is presented thusly:  “published by Munroe and Francis in 1802, the first edition published in America.”  The book itself does say Boston 1802 but makes no reference to first edition at all.

The undocumented one clearly states on its title page, “Philadelphia, first American edition, MDCCXCV.” That’s 1795, folks. Looks to me like a graduate student screwed up a little bit!  

The Munroe and Francis is titled this way:  The Dramatick works of William Shakespeare Printed complete with Dr. Samuel Johnson’s preface and notes, to which is prefixed the life of the author.”   The Philadelphia version is as follows:  The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, Vol 1, Collected from the latest and best London editions, with notes by Samuel Johnson, LLD to which are added a glossary and the life of the author.  embellished with a striking likeness from the collection of his Grace the Duke of Chandos.”   (I may have made a couple of transcription errors in there.)   I thought it was pretty neat.  Glad I didn’t miss that case.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/7/30schmelling.html Pretty much speaks for itself, but it’s only going to be funny if you’re a Facebook user :).   The king poked the queen. The queen poked the king back. Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.   (Why the author didn’t use Claudius and Gertrude instead of king and queen, I have no idea.)

Ok, here’s the game.  Find a quote in one play that looks like it’s a reference to another one.  Chances are it wasn’t, but then again who really knows, right? The most obvious one, perhaps, is when Macbeth says that he will not “play the Roman fool” and fall upon his sword….exactly like Brutus does at the end of Julius Caesar.  That one only half counts, since it’s obviously more a historical reference than Shakespeare directly referencing himself.  (There’s also the part in Hamlet where Polonius speaks of having played Caesar.) I thought of this thread during AYLI it the other day, since the character playing Jaques also played Bottom last year, and there’s a Jaques line where he says “If it do come to pass that any man turn ass….” which of course is exactly what happens to Bottom. Lastly, I think it’s funny to imagine that Amiens’ song: Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because though are not seen,
Although thy breath be rude. Is actually a reference to Lear: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! But of course I realize that would be pushing my luck :).  Can’t you just imagine Lear on the heath breaking out into song?