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The first part of this section of my index is about the Shakespeare texts we have, mainly copies of the First folio. The second, and shorter, is about other authors who either “share” an episode with the Bard, or are the objects of an episode, which is surprising, but there you are.
Texts editors, collectors and conservation (with one recent addition since I first published this post)
- As a prologue to the episodes on texts, here is https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-38/, on Shakespeare’s portraits we have, or think we have.
There are several episodes of Shakespeare unlimited on the publication of Shakespeare’s works:
- This is, I think, the oldest, about how Heminge and Condell put together the volume.
https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-47/
- These episodes are interesting in that they explain how notions about Shakespeare, and perspectives on his work change in time.
https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/first-folio-chris-laoutaris/
https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-
https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-36/ is on Mr. Folger himself.
- https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/lost-plays-mcinnis/ offers the staggering idea that we may have only half the plays that Shakespeare wrote.
- Editing Shakespeare is an interview to two prestigious Shakespeare scholars and editors, Paul Werstine and Suzanne Gossett. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-31/
- https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/lady-editors-yarn/ is on the lack of recognition that women editors faced for a long time.
- https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-44/ is on the physical work done on the precious volumes the Folger owns.
- In 2017, a new First Folio was discovered: https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/first-folio-discovery-france/
https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/milton-first-folio/ is the perfect bridge between the two groups of episodes listed here: two young scholars explain how they came to discover the copy of the First Folio that had belonged to John Milton. It is also an interesting window on how not only the Internet, but social media, too, can help scholarly cooperation.
Episodes on other poets and writers
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- One episode is about Shakespeare, Marlowe and Henry VIII. It explains how, while computer programs can tell you which sections of a certain text were written but one or the other dramatist, they cannot help with how it came to be. Was Shakespeare contacted while Marlowe was writing the historical play? Was he asked for additions later? https://soundcloud.com/folgershakespearelibrary/shakespeare-and-marlowe.
- https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/john-donne-katherine-rundell/ is an interview to Katherine Rundell, author of Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne.
- Probably the most surprising episode was https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeares-sisters-targoff/. We all remember Virginia Woolf saying that if Shakespeare had had an equally talented sister, she would have killed herself: her assumption was that there was no place for women writers and intellectuals in Elizabethan England. Well, it seems she was wrong. Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer (nee Bassano), Anne Clifford are just some of the female authors Ramie Targoff has researched, and while she herself says that things were more complicated for at least some of them than for their male counterparts, they wrote and published their works. It was later that they disappeared, so that even today we are little aware of them.
- https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespeare-unlimited-episode-28/, instead, is on the hypothesis that Shakespeare and his friends would go to the Tabard Inn in Southwark, which burned down in 1676.
- https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/wife-of-bath-turner/ is on the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales. No Shakespearean connection, but very interesting, and a lively interview.
- And finally, there are two interviews to contemporary American poets. The one to Billy Collins has already been listed in the sonnets section of this index, but here you go https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/billy-collins/
And here is the one to Rita Dove. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/rita-dove/,
Got to get down to work. I can’t do anything about the ads WordPress ads to my posts.