Life This is not the blog post I was planning to write and if your blogger had any sense, he'd just go off and do something else. But I'm here now so I might as well post something.
This time last week, I'd just arrived in Stratford-Upon-Avon after a brutal overnight stay at the budget Ibis hotel in Birmingham. By budget, they mean cheap. The bed is a futon mattress on some glorified pallets. The wash basin is in that room. The shower makes a periodic groaning sound which I can only attribute to being in sympathy with the rest of the plumbing when someone flushes a toilet. The breakfast is "continental" meaning lots of bakery products, catering fruit and yoghurt and two small mounds of reformed pork and ham. There's no kettle in the room. Instead you have to pay £1.50 for a paper cup to be used in a coffee machine.
When I was last in Stratford, the RST was still being refurbished so I was keen to see what it looked like now and so booked myself on a tour. As it turned out, this was mostly a look at the building were costumes and some props are made, which was still fascinating but did also mean we didn't get to see inside the auditorium (which was apparently closed for rehearsals). The tour did however include a five minute glance through the on-site permanent exhibition, currently closed to the public due to continuing refurbishment work in the Swan Threatre below. It acts as a good finale for this tour because it includes costumes from across the history of RSC productions.
At the start of the exhibition is a Folio and so you can imagine my excitement. With just minutes to spare, I quickly took a photo of the book and the label pleased that I'd unexpectedly been able to tick another one off the list. It also looks extremely pretty with the reflection of a stained glass window shining across its display case.
Later I consulted the Eric Rasmussen (et al) book listing the first folios and assumed it must be (39) The Theatre Copy from The Shakespeare Centre with its interesting story about the Pope and a misunderstanding. In 1964, three members of the RSC, Dorothy Tutin, Derek Godfrey, and Tony Church visited Rome to give a recital of Shakespeare's plays at the Palazzo Pio in front of the pontiff and a couple of thousand guests. They took their folio along for it to be bless by the Pope at the conclusion of the performance. Unfortunately something was lost in translation and he took it as a gift. After some diplomatic shenanigans, the folio was eventually returned.
All of which hilarious pot pourri, sorry, popery would have made for a decent blog post. Except when I just sat down to write, I read the label which accompanied the folio (something which I'd not had time for during the tour).
As you can see, this is not that First Folio. It is a Second Folio. The Second Folio has its own publication history and by rights should be greeted with just the same awe as the first edition. As the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust explains, it's the first attempt at "editing" the existing text, with 1700 corrections and the additions of far more stage directions. It has the first work of John Milton to see print, "An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet W. Shakespeare", written when he was 22 and part of an extra page of effigies for this edition. There are only 250 copies of the Second Folio in existence which is only a few more than the first.
But this tickylist project is not about the Second Folio, it is about the First Folio and so this is not the blog post I was planning to write. When and if I do clasp eyes on (39) The Theatre Copy from The Shakespeare Centre, there'll no doubt be something quite similar to this with some extra material about the provenance and a few other oddities.
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