Books and Reading in Shakespeare's England

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2020

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you have a book that means something special to you? 400 years ago, when printed books were a fairly new thing, they meant something to their owners too. But what they meant was, in many ways, much different from what they mean today. In this episode we talk to two authors about how people read, acquired, and collected books in Shakespeare’s time. Stuart Kells is the author of Shakespeare’s Library (Counterpoint, 2019). It speculates on what books the Bard might have owned and tells some intriguing stories about people over the years who’ve claimed either to have found the library or to have owned pieces of it. Jason Scott-Warren’s book is Shakespeare’s First Reader (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), which dissects the library of Richard Stonley, an Elizabethan bureaucrat who was the first person we know of to buy a printed book written by Shakespeare—a copy of Venus and Adonis that Stonley picked up on June 12, 1593. Kells and Scott-Warren are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Stuart Kells is an Australian writer. He is the author of Penguin and the Lane Brothers, and The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders. Jason Scott-Warren is a College Lecturer and Director of Studies in English at Cambridge University in England. Recently, we had him on Shakespeare Unlimited when he discovered, based on research by Claire M.L. Bourne, that the First Folio at the Free Library of Philadelphia was once owned by John Milton. From the Folger's Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 4, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Give Me Some Ink and Paper,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical helped from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, Roger Chatterton at Kite Recording Studio in Cambridge, England, and Simon Knight in the recording studio at La Trobe University’s College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce in Melbourne, Australia.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you have a book that means something special to you? Maybe you read it at a certain time in your
0:05.4	life and it gave you strength or answers. Maybe it was a gift from someone important to you,
0:11.0	or an inheritance. Books are special in our lives in particular ways. They mean something
0:17.3	specific. Four hundred years ago, books were a fairly new thing, printed books were at least,
0:23.6	and they meant something specific to their owners too.
0:27.6	But what they meant was in many ways much different from what they mean today.
0:36.6	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:43.5	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.
0:46.6	Two authors have new books out right now on the subject of books.
0:51.4	Specifically, they have both separately taken a look at what having a book meant to people
0:56.9	in Shakespeare's time. One by Australian writer Stuart Kells is called Shakespeare's Library.
1:04.2	It speculates on what book Shakespeare might have owned, and it also tells some intriguing
1:09.0	stories about people over the years who've claimed either to have found the library or to have owned, and it also tells some intriguing stories about people over the years who've claimed
1:11.7	either to have found the library or to have owned pieces of it. The other book is called Shakespeare's
1:19.2	first reader. It's by Cambridge University professor Jason Scott Warren, and it dissects the library
1:25.8	of Richard Stonley, an Elizabethan bureaucrat, who was the first
1:30.5	person we know of to buy a printed book written by Shakespeare. On June 12, 1593, he picked up a copy
1:39.6	of Shakespeare's racy poem, Venus, and Adonis. We felt that taken together, Stoneley's actual
1:46.7	library and stories of Shakespeare's imaginary one, offer a fascinating window into the sociology
1:53.3	of people living at the time when Shakespeare's plays were first being performed. We invited Jason
1:59.0	and Stewart into our studios in Melbourne and Cambridge to
2:02.2	tell us what they know. We call this podcast, Give Me Some Ink and Paper. Stuart Kells and
	...

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