How much does he spend on, for example, sort of, corporate entertainment, in a way. What kinds of bits and pieces is he buying? What kinds of sums does he spend on clothing? Answer, huge sums. I mean, what’s so brilliant about this is it enables us to nest the First Folio, which we always pluck out from any context-you know, it’s an object on its own-back in Dering’s account book, it enables us to put it back in this context of wider expenditure. SMITH: I think that’s a really good way to see it. A sort of a consumer.īOGAEV: So, are his account books really a record of his social aspirations that way? You know, the plays are a way of establishing a pedigree? He’s a very particular kind of early modern subject if we want to get sort of economical about it. It seems to be an important part of his identity, I guess, as a young man building himself, building the man he wants to be, through purchasing. SMITH: He’s trying, I think, to balance his treasury and keep a sense of what he’s spending on what. Just to back up for a second, why did he record his expenses so meticulously? I assume that that must have been for performance, with his friends and family back in Kent, presumably with false beards.īOGAEV: Okay, fun. But Edward Dering seems to have been the first person to commission that. Part of the evidence for that is we’ve got an amazing manuscript in the Folger Shakespeare Library of the first mash-up of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. It does seem to say “false beards.” I think he was getting together some of the paraphernalia to do amateur theatricals back home in Surrenden in Kent. This can’t say ‘false beards.’ This just can’t say ‘false beards.’ This must be a sort of secretary hand error.”Įverybody agrees. There’s a wonderful bit in his diaries, in his account books, that I just thought, “This can’t be right. He’s doing a really substantial job of buying a play library.īut he buys other stuff too. He obviously wanted, I think, to buy up as many play texts as he possibly could, because although he very rarely gives the title of those texts in his account book, he gives the number, and the number cumulatively is pretty much everything that would have been in print. And perfectly, because he does seem such a shopaholic, he buys two copies.īOGAEV: He did seem to be a big play buyer besides Shakespeare. On the 5th of December, as you say, 1623, he is the first attested buyer of a copy of the 1623 folio, the collected edition of Shakespeare’s works. He’s paying money to cross the Thames by boat, money for his horses to be stabled, money for accommodation. He is spending to impress the circle around Buckingham and other influential people, so he’s buying a lot. He is spending time in London and he is… he’s trying to get on really. We’ve got the same for Edward Dering, who is a young Kentish gentleman. People would be pouring over, you know, “Why did you spend all this money on cups of coffee? And what is all this?” It’s as if I had my biography done from my American Express statements would be so embarrassing. Here’s Emma Smith, in conversation with Barbara Bogaev.īARBARA BOGAEV: I love that you name your introduction “Sir Edward Dering Goes Shopping.” It’s like, “Oh, it’s a Richard Scarry book.” Why do you start with the first buyer of the First Folio on December 5th, 1623? And how do you know so much about him?ĮMMA SMITH: Well, we know about Edward Dering because he has had-certainly for this part of his life-the misfortune, in a way, of being known only for what he spends. She’s also leading a year-long scholarly program for the Folger Institute called “Next Gen Editing.” Smith’s will be a familiar voice to long-time listeners-this is her fourth appearance on the show. It’s called Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book. In addition to writing a history of the production of the First Folio, Smith has written another whole book about its circulation. Others are notable for where they traveled and with whom.Įmma Smith, who teaches Shakespeare at Oxford University, will be our guide. Some of those adventures left visible traces-marginal notes, rings left by wineglasses, even paw prints. Over the past 400 years, the remaining copies of the First Folio have had eventful lives. Today, we’re going in a different direction: to find out what happened after the Folio was printed. A few months ago, we heard the story of the making of the Folio from scholar Chris Laoutaris. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio. I’m Michael Witmore, the Folger Director. MICHAEL WITMORE: What can you learn from a book? Not from the words printed in it, but from the history of the book itself? And what if the book in question is 400 years old?įrom the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
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