Book Note: Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book

Smith, Emma. Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

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This year marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, and that naturally comes with a great deal of study and celebration.

It's hard to determine a specific birthday for the First Folio, but the date it was entered into the Stationers' Register might be a good one: November 8, 1623 (see the entry and read more about it here).

Since I totally missed that, perhaps the date of the first recorded sale of the volume would be in order. Sir Edward Dering bought a copy on December 5, 1623, and I learned that information from Emma Smith's marvelous book Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book (2).

Smith's account of the First Folio is both scholarly and approachable. I recommend it highly for experts and enthusiasts alike. With great attention to contemporary documents and a wealth of anecdotes, Smith covers five different ways of looking at the Folio: Owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. Each of these separate chapters is fascinating and takes us on a four-hundred-year journey with those subjects as the focus.

I found it hard to extract sample passages from such a full and varied text. Should I show Smith's analyses of how people annotated their First Folios over the years? Should I show the work of the cryptographers who found codes embedded in the First Folio texts in particular? Should I provide something about how actors embraced (or didn't) the First Folio texts for performance?

All that is there, but, instead, I'll provide the part of Smith's introduction where she covers the scope of the book:

Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book is a terrific study of the amazing First Folio, and it's a terrific way to celebrate the book's four hundredth birthday.

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A Tiny Bit of Shakespeare in a Friends Subplot

"The One with the Fake Monica." By Adam Chase and Ira Ungerleider. Perf. Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, and Philip Rayburn Smith. Dir. Gail Mancuso. Friends. Season 1, episode 21. NBC. 27 April 1996. DVD. Studio Distribution Services, 2010.

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ShakespeareGeek surprised me recently by asking if I had seen the Friends episode where Joey auditions for the role of Mercutio in a production of Romeo and Juliet. I remembered the small reference to Lady Macbeth (for which, q.v.). And I knew that I myself had raised the question of what role Joey played in Macbeth (for which, q.v.). Beyond that, I knew nothing.

I didn't rest long in my ignorance. At the end of "The One with the Fake Monica," ShakespeareGeek told me, we see Joey start an audition for Mercutio.

Let me set the scene. Joey Tribbiani's agent has suggested that he take on a stage name that doesn't sound quite so Italian. Chandler, as a joke, suggests "Joe Stalin." And when he realizes that Joey has no idea who that is, he keeps the joke going—even suggesting that he go with "Joseph" instead of "Joe."

Later in the episode, Joey complains that there's already a guy named Joseph Stalin and that he wasn't particularly nice.

Finally, during the closing credits, we see Joey auditioning for Mercutio:

And there's the joke. Chandler has convinced Joey that a good stage name would be "Holden McGroin."

But remember that we got there by way of Shakespeare (and, of course, by way of ShakespeareGeek).

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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A Brief Quote from Hamlet in a Sherlock Holmes–Related Episode of Star Trek (and it's Not the Quote You're Thinking of)

“Elementary, Dear Data.” By Brian Alan Lane. Perf. Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Diana Muldaur, and Brent Spiner. Dir. Rob Bowman. Star Trek: The Next Generation. Season 2, episode 3. Syndicated television. 3 December 1988. DVD. Paramount, 2002.

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I've spent (probably) far more time than I should compiling all the Shakespeare references in Star Trek (for which, q.v.). And every time I think I've reached the end, one more quotation or allusion or reference comes my way.

I recently finished reading Sir Patrick Stewart's Making it So, a fascining memoir that has even more Shakespeare than Star Trek. I also occasionally listen to audiobooks or television shows when I'm having trouble sleeping. The former led me to listening to the latter this week. In other words, I wasn't setting out to re-watch all the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which makes it very serindipitous that I happened to hear a Shakespeare quote that I hadn't noticed before. 

The quote occurs in the first Sherlock Holmes episode—the one where Data quotes Sherlock Holmes quoting Henry V (for which, q.v.). Let's give it a try:

There you have it! A Sherlock Holmes–Related Episode of Star Trek with a brief quote from Hamlet's father's ghost: "Murder most fowl" comes in Act I, scene v, line 27.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Shakespeare in Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man

Bradbury, Ray. The Illustrated Man. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2011.

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Since this summer, I've been re-reading (or reading, in some cases) the works of Ray Bradbury. I was amazed anew at The Martian Chronicles. I'm delightedly and agonizingly in the middle of Fahrenheit 451 once more. And I read The Illustrated Man for the first time.

In that volume—which is a loosely-connected series of stories, some previously published—I found some Shakespeare.

In a story entitled "The Exiles" (which had previously been published under the title "The Mad Wizards of Mars"—see below), we switch between two settings: (1) Men on a rocket ship bound for Mars with the purpose of eradicating forever the books that Earth has banned and (2) The inhabitants of Mars itself. In this later group, we find the authors who have been banned and their characters.

The Martians (not really Martians, you understand, but that's a good shorthand term for this story) are putting up a terrific fight. The Weïrd Sisters are there, casting spells against the invaders. Edgar Allen Poe is there, serving as the leader of the Martians. Charles Dickens is there . . . but he's refusing to fight because he doesn't believe his books should have been banned in the first place.

I'm not going to provide any spoilers—you should read this yourself!—but here are the first few pages to entice you into reading it yourself:

Bonus Image: The Story's First Appearance

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's Welcome to Jasorassic Park

Amend, Bill. Welcome to Jasorassic Park. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 1992.

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Note: I'm backdating this post from its actual composition date of 15 December 2023 so that it fits into the chronological journey through all the FoxTrot volumes. 

As with Eight Yards, Down and Out, my first trip through Bill Amend's Welcome to Jasorassic Park didn't reveal any Shakespeare. But Bardfilm doesn't give up that easily. Bardfilm will, of course, see things that aren't really there and say they're related to Shakespeare.

In this case, though, there really is some Shakespeare in one comic strip in Welcome to Jasorassic Park. In the last panel of this back-to-school strip, Paige has a stack of books. We can't see any of the titles, but I recognize the third one up as a copy of The Tempest (the Penguin edition). It's encouraging that her teachers assigned her not only the longest book Tolstoy ever wrote but also a delightful example of late Shakespeare.

With that in mind, enjoy this strip even more!

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's Come Closer, Roger, There's a Mosquito on your Nose

Amend, Bill. Come Closer, Roger, There's a Mosquito on your Nose. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1997.

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Even though it doesn't have any sweeping week-long Shakespeare-related series of strips, I'm quite fond of Come Closer, Roger, There's a Mosquito on your Nose.

What it may lack in scope it more than makes up for with its sharp, focused use of Shakespeare.

For example, in one of the first strips in the volume, Jason is asking Paige if she needs any help with her homework. First, he asks about Math. Then he asks about Science. Then it becomes evident that he's already "helped" her with her English homework:

I just love the idea that he was trying to sabotage her homework by saying something about the great Elizabethan dramatist Chet Shakespeare.

The next strip we'll look at doesn't seem very Shakespearean . . . but give it a chance. Jason has written his mom a mushy card, trying to butter her up so she'll do something he wants. But he accidentally left it in Eileen Jacobson's book. 

It's the "Zounds!" that connects us to Shakespeare. After all, he uses the word over twenty times in his plays.

And if you didn't think that was particularly Shakespearean, try this strip. Jason's friends are mocking him—and using Shakespeare to do so:

I don't often see the sonnets used in Shakespeare-related comic strips. But Amend is versatile (as is, I suppose, Jason). Sonnet XVIII finds its way in here:

And, finally, here's a nicely subtle Shakespeare reference:

At first, I misread that as "Nice try, Oliver," and I thought it was somehow a joke related to Oliver Twist, who is notoriously served bad food. But, no. Andy is saying "Nice try, Olivier," indicating that Peter's performance may be equal to the acting prowess of one of the most well-known Shakespearean actors, but she's not buying it.

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's At Least This Place Sells T-Shirts

Amend, Bill. At Least This Place Sells T-Shirts. Kansas City: Andrews and McMell, 1996.

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The quest to track down all the Shakespeare in FoxTrot continues with one small reference to Shakespeare.

Paige seems to be the main one to have Shakespeare homework, at least in this era of the strip:

There you have it!

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A Shakespeare Allusion in Season Eight of The Office

"Special Project." By Amelie Gillette. Perf. Rainn Wilson, Mindy Kaling, Ed Helms, Leslie David Baker, Kate Flannery, Lindsey Broad, and Oscar Nuñez. Dir. David Rogers. The Office. Season 8, episode 14. NBC. 9 February 2012. DVD. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, 2019.

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In Office time, it's been six years since our last (possible? probable?) Julius Caesar allusion (for which, q.v.). 

In the intervening time, Dwight seems to have brushed up on his Shakespeare.

In the episode, Andy has made a decision about who gets to travel to Florida for a special project—and Dwight doesn't like it. But he knows that a straightforward approach won't work. Instead, he praises Andy's decision (while asserting that he doesn't understand the logic of it) and riles up his fellow employees to bring Andy's decision into question.

Does that sound familiar? 

If not, what if I add that Dwight says, "Andy is an honorable man"?

I can't be the only Shakespeare / Office fan who finds in the setup an allusion to Mark Antony's surreptitious attack on Brutus in Julius Caesar during Caesar's funeral. Let's take a look:

I acknowledge that that is an allusion rather than a quotation, but it seems entirely in character for Dwight to employ the sneaky rhetorical strategy of Anthony in his own plan to bring down Andy.

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Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's The Return of the Lone Iguana

Amend, Bill. The Return of the Lone Iguana. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1996.

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As we continue on our quest to track down all the Shakespeare in Bill Amend's wondrous FoxTrot comics, we continue to go over old ground. 

I've written about Paige's starring as Cleopatra before (for which, q.v. et q.v.). But there were a couple other strips that connected to Shakespeare in one way or another.

First, then, those others. We start with Peter complaining about his school day:

Later in the book, we return to this them, but with a decided difference:

Yes, it connects to Shakespeare. Tangentially. I mean, the homework he doesn't have is probably Shakespeare-related, right?

Okay, fine. 

Let's turn to some unquestionably Shakespearean strips. This time, Amend gives us a two-week sequence about Paige playing Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Enjoy!

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Book Note: You Wouldn't Want to Be a Shakespearean Actor!: Some Roles You Might Not Want to Play

Morley, Jacqueline. You Wouldn't Want to Be a Shakespearean Actor!: Some Roles You Might Not Want to Play. Illus. David Antram. London: Franklin Watts, 2010.

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I'm very excited. I had completely forgotten about the "You Wouldn't Want To" children's book series—and I had never come across this particular volume before last week.

The fundamental gimmick of the series is that nostalgia about different time periods is misplaced and that it could be dreadful to live in any number of different eras.

Here, we're told why acting in Shakespeare's company was really no picnic. And it does so with good historic detail and a use of the second person that invites our imaginative engagement with the material.

Let me show you what I mean!

Here, "you" have already gone through the hard work of being hired as a player, and you're discovering what that means: 

This next spread nicely encapsulates the demolition of the theatre called The Theatre and foreshadows its rebirth as The Globe: 

I'm very impressed with the entire series, but this volume was particularly pleasing. I'll soon be moving on to You Wouldn't Want to be Married to Henry VIII and You Wouldn't Want to Sail in the Spanish Armada and others. Stay tuned!

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's Take Us To Your Mall

Amend, Bill. Take Us To Your Mall. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1995.

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My favorite way for the comic FoxTrot to deal with Shakespeare is with a longer-format, week-long series of strips.

As I've been working my way through the collections, I've enjoyed seeing Amend's mastery of the genre develop through the years.

In this series, he's certainly on a roll.

Note: I have posted on these strips before—in 2009, to be precise (for which q.v. et etiam q.v.)—but I seem to be falling into a "FoxTrot Friday" pattern, and I'll try to keep that up until we cover all the Shakespeare in FoxTrot.

Without much more ado (because the subject is Macbeth), let's see how Paige is doing with her Shakespeare homework in this volume:

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Shakespeare in FoxTrot's May the Force Be With Us, Please

Amend, Bill. May the Force Be With Us, Please. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1994.

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For the previous six books, the Shakespeare strips have mostly been singletons. 

One mentions a homework assignment.

Another says that a quiz is forthcoming.

Yet another mentions that either Paige or Peter has an essay on Shakespeare that they're working on.

In May the Force Be With Us, Please, we have a nice week-long series on Shakespeare.

True, it doesn't have anything to do with the specific elements of plot or characters in the play, but Paige has written an essay on Macbeth that she accidentally deletes:

Although I would hope that a student would spend more than four hours on a Macbeth essay, I do understand Paige's pain at having it disappear completely. Let's see if Jason can help.

And there we have it!  Though I would like to advise Paige to take some time to edit her Macbeth essay before turning it in.

Whatever school Paige attends has the right idea when it comes to Shakespeare. A little later in the school year, she has yet another Shakespeare essay due:

I didn't say that Paige has the right idea when it comes to Shakespeare. But we can all hope that she's learning through these experiences. I know that I certainly am!

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