A spectacular 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of “Macbeth” in New York City employed hundreds of black actors and theater technicians. It was financed by the Federal Theatre Project, a controversial part of the federal government’s New Deal programs to provide jobs for Americans.
Can you identify what’s happening in each of these three scenes from Hamlet? The drawings by British illustrator John Jellicoe are part of the Folger collection.
Revisit the bright spots of 2020 by taking a look at some of our most popular #FolgerFinds posts on Instagram from the past year. Highlights from the Folger collection include a beautiful book binding, a striking costume design, and a droll owl illustration.
Thomas Sheppey devoted several densely written pages of his 17th-century manuscript to the topic of sleep — how to trigger it, how to interrupt it, how to influence its depth and length, and even how to stop people talking in their sleep.
Voting was not a secret process in early modern England. The poll book shown here published the names of all the voters in London and which candidates and party they voted for in 1710.
This hand-colored caricature from 1797, “The Oaken Chest or the Gold Mines of Ireland, a Farce,” satirizes William Henry Ireland and his family in their forgery of the “Shakespeare Papers.” The print is full of delightful details that will make you chuckle. Get an up-close look and learn more about this Folger collection item by clicking through the arrows to see captions that zoom in on different parts of the image.
This 1574 hand-colored map of London and its surroundings shows us something of the London in which William Shakespeare lived and worked. Get an up-close look at the map and learn more about it by clicking through the arrows to see captions that zoom in on different parts of the image.
Get an up-close look at the painting and learn more about it by clicking through the arrows to see captions that zoom in on different parts of the image. Click the eye icon to hide or display the text.
Get an up-close look at the title page of one of the Folger’s 82 First Folios and learn more about it by clicking through captions that zoom in on different parts of the page.
Recently New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley extolled the virtues of reading plays out loud in your living room as a way to while away the COVID-19 time at home. Memories of his own time reading Hamlet as a child opposite his mother “have been much on my mind in this time of shuttered… Continue Reading »
