Newberry Library presents a free, virtual conversation with Peter Garino and Jill Gage about Shakespeare’s First Folio. This program will be held virtually on Zoom. Once you register, you'll receive a link to access the discussion on Zoom.
Few books are more celebrated than Shakespeare’s First Folio. Published in 1623, the First Folio (so-called because of its large folio format) was the first collected edition of the Bard’s drama, bringing together edited texts of 36 plays--including 18 that had never before been published.
Only 233 copies of the First Folio are known to survive. One is held by the Newberry.
In this virtual conversation, Peter Garino of the Shakespeare Project of Chicago and Jill Gage of the Newberry will use the First Folio as a jumping-off point to explore broader questions about Shakespeare’s work and influence in his day and ours. Are Shakespeare’s plays better read or performed? How does the First Folio shape our thinking about this question? How do historians, literary scholars, and actors think differently about the book?