.. Balz
Engler . The Folger Shakespeare
Library, in its history and in the shape that it has
gradually acquired, is a document of the American
appropriation of Shakespeare. Built as a shrine both to
Shakespeare and to the American entrepreneurship making the
collection possible, the choice of location immediately
invited its being placed in the symbolic geography of the
American capital, and gave Shakespeare a privileged place,
that of origin, among American heroes. The history of the
collection and of the building also illustrate the problems
of such an appropriation, of an Elizabethan English author
to an imperial twentieth-century America. It shows how
America tried to ingest Shakespeare whole, but eventually
managed to transform him into its own transcendental origin.
What the Folgers may have started, like other book
collectors of their time, notably, Furness and Huntington
(*1),
as the acquisition of a revered past, became something else
as the project developed, something truly American,
something truly imperial. Within walking
distance from the Capitol in Washington DC, between 2nd and
3rd Street, and facing East Capitol Street, beside the
enormous Victorian-style Jefferson building of the Library
of Congress and near the Cecil B. de Mille-Roman structure
of the Supreme Court, there is what continues to be one of
the most splendid buildings in the US capital, a huge white
marble box, inscribed: "The Folger Shakespeare Library,"
"Shakespeare" duly written in somewhat larger letters. It is
surrounded by shrubbery, by a lawn in front of its main
façade to the north, a small Elizabethan garden to
the East, and a fountain in the West, towards the Capitol,
showing Puck and his words "Lord, what fooles these mortals
be!" (Mids. III.2.115). This frame, suggesting Nature
in different degrees of domestication (*2),
separates the building from its metropolitan
surroundings. The building itself,
raised above street-level on a pedestal, is in exquisite art
deco style. Its main façade towards East Capitol
Street blends in with the classicism of its surroundings.
Between two entrances nine high rectangular windows are cut
into its shiny surface, separated by flat pilasters, without
either base or capital. Above this middle section of the
façade, where the classical arrangement would demand
a sculptural frieze, there are three inscriptions instead.
The central one (*3)
is from the First Folio: "HIS WIT CAN NO MORE LIE HID THEN
IT COVLD BE LOST. READE HIM THEREFORE: AND AGAINE AND
AGAINE. John Heminge. Henrie Condell." Strikingly, these
inscriptions combine historical English spelling, Roman
lettering, and, as a democratic gesture, an indication of
their sources. Large, strongly sculpted reliefs instead
appear below the windows, at eye level for the onlooker,
depicting climactic scenes from nine Shakespeare plays, with
the death of Julius Caesar in a central position
(*4).
They contribute substantially to the impression of a
treasure chest. The Folger, as it is
affectionately called by those who have had the privilege of
working there, is indeed a treasure chest. It offers the
finest collection in the world of Shakespeareana, and other
books and objects from the early modern period to the
eighteenth century. Among the books there are more than
eighty Folio editions of Shakespeare (*5),
about one third of those still extant, and a large number of
Quartos, among them the only existing copy of Titus
Andronicus. The collection was
brought together by Henry Clay Folger (1857-1930) and his
wife Emily Clara Jordan Folger (1858-1936), in a sustained
effort of forty years. Folger, an executive of Standard Oil
in New York, used his increasing wealth for their
collection. In 1928 he resigned from his post as chairman of
the board and devoted all his energy to the project of the
library. At his death in 1930, the building was well under
way; it was dedicated on April 23, 1932. The Folgers also
left a substantial endowment for the further development of
their project, for the expansion of its holdings, for
exhibitions based on them, for educational and academic
programs and cultural events. The Folger was not
originally conceived as the research library it is now. Its
founders first wanted it to be called the "Folger
Shakespeare Memorial," but then Emily Folger felt that this
name had inspired Philippe Cret, the architect of the
building, who had also designed several war memorials
(*6),
to propose too somber a façade. Folger explained: "Of
course we mean the memorial to be a testimonial, rather than
something serious" (*7)
--i.e.
something to be remembered for. But they decided to change
the title to "Folger Shakespeare Foundation". And some
months later Folger wrote again to the architect: "We now
have come to the conclusion that the simplest form will be
the best. Let us, then, put on the building "FOLGER
SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY" (*8).
After all, our enterprise is primarily a Library, and all
other features are supplemental." (*9) Two things are
instructive about this process of naming. First, the
inclusion of the Folgers' name was never in doubt. The
memorial was to be both to themselves and to Shakespeare; it
did become the kind of somber memorial Emily Folger had
feared when they were both buried in it. But at the same
time it was to mark the hope of a happy union in spirit. As
the pastor put it at Folger's funeral: "I have felt that
perhaps after his father and mother and loved ones had
greeted him, Will Shakespeare took Henry Clay Folger by the
hand, and led him up to the blessed Christ."
(*10)
But it speaks
for the Folgers' modesty they wanted the name "Shakespeare"
on the façade to be written in larger letters than
their own. Secondly, the process
of naming shows that it took the Folgers some time before
they called their project a library, and even then it was
not to be simply a resource center. They thought of their
memorial as a proud exhibition of books as venerable
objects. When planning the basement, Folger expressed the
wish that "there will be transferred from the Main room the
more common items and less valuable books into these stack
rooms; so that at no time will they contain any of the rare,
more costly, or better bound volumes." (*11)
This
arrangement, which banished common reference works from the
reading room, was followed in the early years of the Folger
as a research library. At the same time the
Folgers were very much aware of the role their library would
play for research. As Folger put it in a letter, "my
ambition has been to make the United States a center for
literary study and progress." (*12)
This ambition has been brilliantly realized; in no other
place in the world can Shakespeare's printed texts be
compared as systematically, in no other place can such
comparison be used towards establishing the best texts.
Charlton Hinman's facsimile edition of the First Folio, and
his study The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First
Folio of Shakespeare (*13)
are monuments to this. The Folgers made their
books more available to scholarship; as Michael Bristol has
pointed out: "By 'liberating' these rare books from the
vagaries and eccentricities of residual proprietary
holdings, Folger also freed American Shakespeare scholars
from their dependency on England and on the noblesse
oblige of owners of 'great houses'. Social credentials
thus became less important than professional credentials in
achieving access to the material." (*14)
Shakespeare studies too could declare themselves
independent. Where in the United
States would such a library have to be placed? The Folgers
decided early on to build it near the Capitol and the
Library of Congress in Washington (*15).
Emily Folger's happy childhood memories of Washington, as
has been suggested (*16),
cannot have played the crucial part in their choice. As
Folger wrote to the Librarian of Congress: Not only did the
Folgers expect their Shakespeare memorial to add to the
dignity of the capital of the United States, they also
wanted it to be close to the buildings that represent the
nation. There was clearly a political vision that determined
their choice. Michael Bristol ascribes this to the Folgers'
"nationalistic sentiments" (*18),
but one may be more specific. This was not the capital of
just any nation, but of one that increasingly had imperial
aspirations since the Spanish-American War in the 1890's,
symbolically articulated in the Roman classicism
(*19)
of its public buildings and in the universal collections of
the Library of Congress. Shakespeare, the universal poet,
would be an important acquisition for this imperial project.
Not only would it free American Shakespeare scholars from
their dependency on England; it would also oblige
Shakespeare scholars from all over the world to come to
Washington (*20)
(an obligation, it has to be said, made a pleasure by the
welcoming staff of the Folger). The political
dimension of the Folger Shakespeare Library suggested here
is confirmed by how it was immediately given its place in
the symbolic geography of the capital (*21).
In his address at Folger's funeral in 1930, William Slade,
the first director of the library, quoted Ashley Thorndike's
observation that 'Washington, Lincoln, Shakespeare . . . are
the three whom Americans universally worship,'
(*22)
and he continued: All three stand for
union: Lincoln in the West "for the Union of the States as
an enduring fact", Washington for the foundation of the
Federal Union, Shakespeare in the East for the transcendent
unity that made it all possible, for "the age which produced
a poetry that is capable of speaking to each successive age
because its living content is itself the material of life."
(*24) Unusually for a
building of its kind, the Folger has two main entrances, at
the two ends of the North façade, the one to the East
marked by the mask of tragedy, the one the West by the mask
of comedy. The one to the East, for visitors, leads to the
exhibition spaces and the theater, the one on the West to
the administrative offices and the reading rooms
(*25). Through the visitors'
entrance, which is open to all, we enter a lobby with a
barrel vault, which, unlike the outside of the building,
does not suggest any particular period style; only the
entrances to the adjacent spaces, the Elizabethan Theatre
and the Exhibition Gallery, allude to Tudor decorative
elements (the same holds true for the lobby to the west).
Straight on we enter the Theatre, which reconstructs the
idea of an Elizabethan one, based on what was known when the
theater was planned in the late 1920's (*26).
Today it is sometimes used for theatrical performances;
originally it was to be one of the exhibits, which, on
occasion, could also be used for public functions, like
lectures (*27). Turning to the right
from the lobby we enter the Exhibition Gallery, a large long
space between the two lobbies. It combines simple square
paneling in darkly varnished Appalachian oak
(*28),
and a high, richly decorated Tudor-style plastered vault. On
the tiled floor we find again the mask of tragedy to the
East, that of comedy to the West (*29).
The walls above the entrances towards the two lobbies
contrast two worlds. Towards the East, where we have come
from, there is the coat-of-arms of Queen Elizabeth I,
towards the West the contemporary crest of the United
States. Below them there are two poetic texts celebrating
Shakespeare's inclusiveness, on the English side Garrick's
lines: "Thrice happy the nation that Shakespeare has
charm'd./ More happy the bosoms his genius has warm'd! / Ye
children of nature, of fashion and whim, / He painted you
all, all join to praise him." These lines, with their
skipping rhythm, are taken from the final chorus of his
pantomime Harlequin's Invasion (1759)
(*30),
in which the Powers of Pantomime are finally overcome by
Mount Parnassus, Shakespeare rises and Harlequin sinks, a
moment celebrated in the final song, which starts with the
lines quoted. In context the quotation may therefore be read
as being critical of the English neglect of Shakespeare's
serious art. On the Western or
American side we find the more ponderous words of the
American poet, essayist and drama critic William Winter
(1836-1917), from his poem "At Shakespeare's Grave": "There
is not anything of human trial / That ever love deplored or
sorrow knew, / No glad fulfillment and no sad denial /
Beyond the pictured truth that Shakespeare drew."
(*31)
Here Shakespeare's works are presented as those of a genius
who knew the ultimate truths of human experience and was
able to inspire others in writing about them. The arrangement of the
Exhibition Gallery suggests a history, which is reflected in
the itinerary prescribed to visitors today. It takes us from
East to West, like the symbolic geography of the capital,
from England to the United States, from an old world to a
new one, from the distant past, the periods of Elizabeth and
Garrick, to the present (and future) of America, a history
of progress. The juxtaposition of tragedy in the East and
comedy in the West, both on the façade and on the
floor of the Exhibition Gallery supports such a redemptive
account. But such a reading
would be too simple. East and West, and everything
associated with them, also seem to stand for conflicts to be
resolved, not by force, but by negotiation producing more
inclusive solutions. This is suggested by the symmetry of
the façade, the juxtaposition of entrances for the
general visitors and for those doing serious work on
Shakespeare, even by the superimposition of historical
English spellings and Roman writing in the
inscriptions. These contrasts and
juxtapositions become crucial once we include the main
reading room in our considerations. Running parallel to the
Exhibition Gallery and south of it, the main reading room is
the heart of the Folger and reserved for an academic elite
(*32).
Entering the building on the West side, having passed the
desk of the (very friendly) Folger Shakespeare Library
Special Police, which is possible only by permission, a sign
saying "Private Offices, No Admittance," and the table of
the registrar, we enter the reading room from the
West. We find ourselves in a
gigantic Tudor hall, which forms a complete contrast to the
art deco exterior, and contradicts the view, widely held
when it was built, that "the interior and exterior treatment
of a building must possess unity." (*33)
The hall is almost 131 feet long, 38 feet wide, and 32 feet
high, as high as the building itself, with shelves along the
walls, a gallery running around it, and stained glass
windows, creating a curious space combining the comfort of
American furniture, the stateliness of a noble house, and
the hallowedness of a church. In the East, in front
of us, there is a hall screen; where the altar would be
placed, a small staircase leads up to the gallery, flanked
by the austere portraits of Henry Clay and Emily Folger in
academic garb (*34);
above it, centrally placed, there is a copy of Shakespeare's
monument on the south side of the chancel of Holy Trinity
Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, and at its back wall a plaque
with the inscription, "To the Glory of William Shakespeare
and the Greater Glory of God" and the names and dates of the
Folgers. Behind this plaque the ashes of the founders are
immured, making the building indeed a memorial both to the
Folgers and to Shakespeare. These are not the only
ecclesiastical features of the room. Opposite, on the West
side above the entrance, there is a large gothic window; its
tracery is again patterned on the chancel window of Holy
Trinity. It shows the seven ages of man, as they are
presented in Jaques' speech in As You Like It (II.7).
(*35)
Below this window Shakespeare's universality is stressed by
two large old Italian globes flanking the entrance doors,
and two inscriptions above them, the only ones by
non-Anglo-Saxon writers in the building, one from Goethe,
one from Victor Hugo, both celebrating the inspirational
quality of Shakespeare's insights, both translated into
English (*36). On the north side,
between the shelves towards the Exhibition Gallery, finally,
there is a fireplace, above which there is yet another
inscription, from Emerson: "England's genius filled all
measure / Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, /
Gave to the mind its Emperor, / And life was larger than
before: / Nor sequent centuries could hit / Orbit and sum of
Shakespeare's wit. / The men who lived with him became /
Poets, for the air was fame." This quotation, according to
Mrs. Folger, summarizes her husband's motives for creating
the library (*37).
Shakespeare, as in the other quotations elaborating on this
theme, is viewed as a divinely inspired genius who, in turn,
inspired his contemporaries (*38)
and can inspire and guide mankind. However, and this is
crucial for Folger's project, we need criticism, historical
criticism, to understand what may inspire us. Several conflicting
perspectives emerge: Whereas the Exhibition Gallery looks
from East to West, the perspective in the main reading room
is clearly from West to East, from the modern world not
simply back into history, but towards transcendental value
offered by it. At the same time, the conflict between the
Tudor reading room and the art deco façade--between
inside and outside--remains unresolved and is negotiated
only to some extent by the lobbies and the less heavily
historicized Exhibition Gallery. Cret explained this
conflict as follows: But this only explains
the conflicting intentions of those involved. As the
exterior of the building and the interior of the main
reading room, the container and its contents, now exist
beside each other, their conflict marks both the attempt to
appropriate Shakespeare in the idiom of imperial classicism
and the impossibility of doing this in any way other than by
ingesting it in one piece. Today, there is an
addition, the so-called new reading room (*39),
built in the early 1980's, which forms a striking contrast
both to the old Tudor one just to the north of it and to the
building's exterior. Its colors are simple white and sand,
its shape based on rectangle and semi-circle. The decoration
of the arches takes up elements from the lobbies, and there
is again a barrel vault, one, however, that, defying the
laws of gravity, hangs from the ceiling. From its edges and
perforations indirect light streams into the room, creating
a space of unearthly meditative beauty without obvious
historical associations; where they are perceptible, they
are to an idealized form of late eighteenth-century
architecture, the period when Shakespeare acquired his
universal role (*40).
As one critic exclaims: "Everything here works in concert:
function, form, scale, and light--and the space comes as
close to being perfect as it is possible to be in this
imperfect world." (*41) Here some of the
pictures are hung that the Folgers collected on the side, as
it were. Most of them show scenes from Shakespeare's plays.
Pride of place, at the center of the East wall, is given to
the early nineteenth-century Beadle portrait of Shakespeare
(*42),
which has an elaborate Gothic frame, crowned by an arch.
This suggests an orientation and ecclesiastical spirit
similar to the old reading room. The painting
dominating the new reading room, however, both for its theme
and its location in the middle of the South wall, is George
Romney's allegorical portrait "The Infant Shakespeare
Attended by Nature and the Passions" (1791-92), originally
executed for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
(*43).
It shows Nature in a sand-colored mantle, unveiling her face
to the chubby infant Shakespeare, the untutored genius, who,
however, is looking at us, and beyond us, towards the
chimney piece with the Emerson inscription. Joy and Sorrow
(Sorrow dressed in blue), also standing for Comedy and
Tragedy, are tending him, while other passions are
respectfully looking on. This is an apotheosis of
Shakespeare appropriate to this room: "The infant is clearly
associated with the Christ Child, as beams of light,
surrounded by adoring angels, burst through the clouds. In
the middle of the radiant glow appears Shakespeare's name,
another example of the Word made flesh." (*44)
With this painting and the space it is part of we have left
behind the historical contingencies of the old reading room
and the exterior of the building and moved into a
transcendental realm, that of the divine inspiration Emerson
claimed for Shakespeare. The Folger Shakespeare
Library was officially dedicated on Shakespeare's 368th
birthday, April 23, 1932, at a moment when economic
depression was at its worst. At the ceremony, which was
broadcast nation-wide, all the public institutions were
represented: "The state, the church, the universities and
schools, learned societies, painting, sculpture, music, and
literature sent their respective delegates."
(*45)
The world of academe was represented by Amherst College, in
whose trusteeship Folger had placed the library. The
president and Mrs. Hoover, surrounded by military and naval
aides, as well as the Secretaries of the Navy, of Commerce,
and of the Interior, were on the platform, the stage of the
Elizabethan Theatre. The British, French and German
ambassadors were present. The pastor from the Folgers'
church in Brooklyn gave the invocation and the benediction.
King George V sent a telegram. The principal address
was given by Joseph Quincy Adams, the research director of
the Folger, who spoke on "Shakespeare and American Culture."
He took up Ashley Thorndike's observation yet again that
there were three persons to whom Americans paid universal
homage, Washington, Lincoln, and Shakespeare, and pointed
out that "now each of this trinity of heroes has a memorial
in the Nation's Capital." (*46)
He pointed out how eagerly the British idolization of
Shakespeare since the early nineteenth century had been
taken up in the United States, and described the crucial
role Shakespeare played in education, in preserving a
homogeneous culture, since the late nineteenth century,
"when foreign immigration, in floodgate fashion, poured into
our land." Further, he expressed hope that in the future,
Shakespeare would "bind together more and more the two great
branches of the Anglo-Saxon people." The tie would not be
political, "rather it will be spiritual." The local The
Sunday Star reported extensively about the "noble shrine
... dedicated in Washington ... to the supreme genius of the
English-speaking race." (*47)
It celebrated the "marble temple whose classic grandeur
ideally personifies the splendor of him in whose honor it is
reared"; and it added: "The Bard of Avon was an Englishman,
but he long since ceased to belong exclusively to Britain.
... The American people pay him homage in the proud
pretension that he is as much of their cultural bone and
sinew as the island that is privileged to call him a native
son." (*48) Since the First World
War it had become part of common political rhetoric to
stress not only the shared roots of English and American
culture, but their unity, which meant that the English would
have to share Shakespeare with the Americans.
(*49)
The shared experience of this war had led to closer ties
between the countries, eventually to a "special
relationship" (*50).
Strikingly, but not surprisingly, the American rhetoric of
Shakespeare's universality, and paradoxically their special
rights in him, resembled the one used in Germany for the
same purpose before the war. As Slade suggestively remarked
at Folger's funeral: "It was probably more by chance than by
conscious direction that active operations looking to the
construction of the Memorial building began on an Armistice
Day. That anniversary is the annual reminder of the human
kinship written large in Shakespeare's plays."
(*51) On the same day, in
Stratford-upon-Avon, the Memorial Theatre, which had burned
down six years earlier, was reopened by the Prince of Wales
(the King and Queen were attending the Cup Final), in the
presence of the ambassadors of many countries and
representatives of important social institutions. The
speeches emphasized the universal appeal of Shakespeare, but
in particular the close ties between Britain and America.
The American ambassador Andrew W. Mellon summarized the
spirit of many other speeches when he said: "Shakespeare
belongs not to one nation but to the world. However, in a
special sense we in America share a feeling of pride that
England has given such a man to the world. He is part of the
heritage we carried in founding a new civilization on the
other side of the ocean." (*52)
It remained for Stanley Baldwin, the representative of the
British government to insist on Shakespeare as a universally
acknowledged poet, but ultimately a possession of the
English: "The magic that the greatest poets had--the words
that seemed to come not from the brain of man but to be
caught up from the seventh heaven and brought down to
earth--spoke to the native ear as it could not to those who
were not native." (*53) . Footnotes: (*1)
Other libraries opened to the public at about the same time:
the Huntington in 1927, the Furness Library in 1932, on the
same day as the Folger. [back
to text] (*2)
Folger wrote to the architect of the Folger, Paul Philippe
Cret, April 30, 1930: "As the figure for the fountain will
be, to a greater or less extent, embowered in shrubbery, the
most fitting figure for the purpose would be Puck." (The
Folger Archive, Box 57) [back
to text] (*3)
The other two, on its left and on its right are: "THOU ART A
MONIMENT WITHOVT A TOMBE, AND ART ALIVE STILL, WHILE THY
BOOKE DOTH LIVE, AND WE HAVE WITS TO READ AND PRAISE TO
GIVE." (Ben Jonson), and "THIS THEREFORE IS THE PRAISE OF
SHAKESPEARE THAT HIS DRAMA IS THE MIRROVR OF LIFE." (Samuel
Johnson). The texts of the inscriptions (there are more on
the west and east façades) were chosen by the
Folgers. [back
to text] (*4)To
the left there are A Midsummer Night's Dream (IV.1),
Romeo and Juliet (III.5), The Merchant of
Venice (IV.1), Macbeth (IV. 1), to the right
King Lear (III.2), Richard the Third (III.1),
Hamlet (III.4) and King Henry IV, part 1
(II.4). [back
to text] (*5) On
the complexity of counting them see Blayney, Peter W.M.,
The First Folio of Shakespeare. Washington, DC: The
Folger Library, 1991, pp. 45-6. [back
to text] (*6)
See Grossman, Elizabeth Greenwell, The Civic Architecture
of Paul Cret, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996, pp. 167-70.
[back
to text] (*7)
"Testimonial" in the sense of "a gift presented to some one
by a number of persons as an expression of appreciation or
acknowledgment of services or merit, or of admiration,
esteem, or respect." (OED 5) [back
to text] (*8)
Folger to Alexander Trowbridge, the consulting architect,
Dec. 17, 1928 (Folger Archive, Box 57) [back
to text] (*9)
Folger to Trowbridge June 20, 1929 (Folger Archive, Box 57)
[back
to text] (*10)
Cadman, S. Parkes, "Henry C. Folger", in Henry Clay
Folger. New Haven: privately printed, 1931, pp. 11-19,
p. 18. [back
to text] (*11)
Folger to Trowbridge, May 2, 1930 (Folger Archive, Box 57)
[back
to text] (*12)
Folger to Herbert Putnam, Library of Congress, Jan 19, 1928
(Folger Archive, Box 57). [back
to text] (*13)
The First Folio of Shakespeare. The Norton Facsimile.
Prepared by Charlton Hinman. New York: Norton, 1968. Second
edition, with a new introduction by Peter W.M. Blayney, New
York: Norton, 1996; The Printing and Proof-Reading of the
First Folio of Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
[back
to text] (*14)
Bristol, Michael, Shakespeare's America, America's
Shakespeare, London: Routledge, 1990, p. 72.
[back
to text] (*15)
Already in 1918, fourteen years before the opening of the
library, they were quietly acquiring land in the place where
the library is now located. [back
to text] (*16)
McDonald, Travis C., Jr. "Modernized Classicism: The
Architecture of Paul Philippe Cret in Washington, DC" M.A.
Thesis School of Architecture, University of Virginia, 1980,
p. 42. [back
to text] (*17)
Folger to Herbert Putnam, Library of Congress, Jan 19, 1928
(Folger Archive, Box 57). [back
to text] (*18)
Bristol, p. 73. [back
to text] (*19)
The popularity of classical style for public buildings is
often ascribed to the success of the World's Columbian
Exhibition in Chicago, in 1893, which led to a re-thinking
of American urban architecture. [back
to text] (*20)
This worry was already expressed in the year when the
library opened. See Max Förster in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch
68 (1932), p. 6. [back
to text] (*21)
This symbolic geography was established when the Senate Park
Commission proposed, in 1902, to erect the Lincoln Memorial
in the place, where after long debate, and the consideration
of alternative sites, it has stood since its dedication in
1922. See Reps, John W., Monumental Washington: The
Planning and Development of the Capital Center.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 96, 107,
157-8. [back
to text] (*22)
Thorndike, Ashley, Shakespeare in America, Annual
Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, 1927. London:
Oxford University Press, 1927, p. 20. [back
to text] (*23)
Slade, William, "The Significance of the Folger Shakespeare
Memorial: an essay towards an interpretation" in Henry
Clay Folger. New Haven: privately printed, 1931: 41-71,
p. 41-2. Michael Bristol, Shakespeare's America,
America's Shakespeare, London: Routledge, 1990, p. 76-7,
quotes this speech and dryly remarks: "The revolutionary
break between England and America was so diminished in
significance here that the military leader of that
revolution could be described as an 'English colonial'."
(p.76) [back
to text] (*24)
Slade, p. 42. [back
to text] (*25)
Originally, the entrance to the West, nearer the Capitol,
was considered to be the more important entrance, and
visitors were also expected to enter there, coming from the
center of metropolitan activities. The importance of the
West side is also marked by the Puck fountain on this side.
[back
to text] (*26)
It is not, as was first envisaged, a reconstruction of the
Fortune theater. This was abandoned because, even though it
was the best documented, too little was known about it to
make possible an exact copy. [back
to text] (*27)
Folger wrote to Cret, Aug. 10, 1919: "The Theatre is to show
the conditions under which Elizabethan plays were presented,
primarily, and any other use by us will be supplemental."
[back
to text] (*28)
As David G. White puts it: "The oaks chosen for use in the
Folger Shakespeare Library appear to have reached their
destiny, for theirs is the mission to preserve in
imperishable beauty and for centuries to come an atmosphere
of the period that the genius of Shakespeare and his
contemporaries made the golden age of English literature."
("The Folger-Shakespeare Library," American Forests,
May 1932, 270-2, 296)
[back to text] (*29)
On a stripe running along the walls the names of sixteen
plays by Shakespeare are inscribed. Starting in the
Northwest they are: Richard III, Othello, Twelfth Night,
King John, Henry IV, Macbeth, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, King
Lear, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Cymbeline, Richard II, Henry V,
The Tempest, Henry VI. [back
to text] (*30)
It was produced by Garrick in 1759. The Folgers, who chose
these lines, probably knew them from Stein, Elizabeth P.,
ed., Three Plays by David Garrick, New York: William
Edwin Rudge, 1926, p. 47. The copy in the library is
dedicated by the author to H.C. Folger, Dec. 2, 1927. The
three graces were actually dancing to it. [back
to text] (*31)
Winter, William, The Poems, New York: Moffat, Yard
and Co., 1909, p.112. The poem celebrates Shakespeare as
divinely inspired, as somebody who was closest to God in
knowing all. The stanza before the one quoted reads: "Here
the divinest of all thoughts descended; / Here the sweet
heavens their sweetest boon let fall; / Upon this hallowed
ground begun and ended /The life that knew, and felt, and
uttered all." In its last stanza, however, the poem presents
a world that is past its fulfillment, in which the "crown of
patience is the best", contradicting the emancipatory
account that the placement of the quotation suggests.
[back
to text] (*32)
Originally, visitors to the Exhibition Gallery could observe
the researchers at work through two glass doors. Legend has
it that this ended when somebody posted a note in the
Exhibition Gallery, saying: "Don't feed the readers."
[back
to text] (*33)
Cret, Paul Philippe, "The Building", in The Folger
Shakespeare Library Washington. Published for the
Trustees of Amherst College, 1933. p. 31. [back
to text] (34) A
description of the two paintings, the details of which
relate to the Library, is given in Pressly, William L., A
Catalogue of Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare
Library, New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1993, pp. 5-6. [back
to text] (*35)
Originally, Folger had intended the stained glass to show
something different. As he wrote to Trowbridge on Jan. 7,
1929: "I presume you have often looked at a picture of the
beautiful window back of the chancel in Trinity Church,
Stratford-upon-Avon. [...] It not only seems to be
of proper form for our style of architecture, but is
fortunately divided into seven parts, so that the center
section could be devoted to Shakespeare, and two each given
to Shakespeare characters in Comedy, History and Tragedy,
assuring adequate variety." This seems to suggest that
Folger was thinking very much in terms of character
criticism. The ways in which the links between
Stratford-upon-Avon and the U.S. have been strengthened by
the adoption of architectural features is striking. The
Seven Ages window in Holy Trinity (on the north side of the
chancel) was a gift by American admirers of Shakespeare; the
Folger stained glass loans it back, as it were. There is
also the so-called American Window in the south transept,
linking biblical and American history. At one point in the
correspondence between Folger and the architect Philippe
Cret there was considerable confusion about these various
windows, which Folger ended by referring Cret to the
frontispiece of William Winter's Shakespeare's
England, New York: Moffat, Yard, 1910.
[back to text] (*36)
Both texts have been shortened and sobered up, as it were.
"I do not remember that any book or person or event ever
produced so great an effect on me as Shakespeare's plays. I
am astonished by their strength and their tenderness, by
their power and their peace." Between the two sentences,
Carlyle's translation has the following text: "They seem as
if they were performances of some celestial genius,
descending among men, to make them, by the mildest
instructions, acquainted with themselves. They are no
fictions! You would think, while reading them, you stood
before the unclosed awaful Books of Fate, while the
whirlwind of most impassioned life was howling through the
leaves, and tossing them fiercely to and fro." (Goethe,
Johann Wolfgang von, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and
Travels, trans. Thomas Carlyle, 2 vols., London: Chapman
and Hall, 1899, vol. 1, 225. [Bk. III, ch. 11]);
"Shakespeare is fertility, force, exuberance, no reticence,
no binding, no economy, the inordinate and tranquil
prodigality of the creator." In Victor Hugo's William
Shakespeare, trans. Melville B. Anderson, Chicago: A.C.
McClurg, 1887, p. 212, it reads: "Shakespeare is fertility,
force, exuberance, the swelling breast, the foaming cup,
the brimming trough, sap in excess, lava in torrents, the
universal rain of life, everything by thousands, everything
by millions, no reticence, no ligature, no
economy, the inordinate and tranquil prodigality of the
creator." (italics mine) [back
to text] (*37)
Slade, William Adams, "The Folger Shakespeare Library",
D.C. Libraries 3,4 July 1932, 96-107, p. 100. The
quotation is from Emerson's "Solution", in The Complete
Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. by Edward Waldo
Emerson, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1903-04, vol. IX, p.
222. Emerson presents, in the voice of the muse, the
tradition of genius in five figures: Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, Swedenborg, and Goethe. The poem, an occasional
piece, was not deemed worthy by him of inclusion in his
Selected Poems. When he used the lines as a
conclusion to his essay "Shakespeare" he changed the
wording; the lines "Nor sequent ... Shakespeare's wit."
became "And centuries brood, nor can attain / The sense and
bound of Shakespeare's brain." See Wynkoop, William M.,
Three Children of the Universe: Emerson's View of
Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton, The Hague: Mouton, 1966,
p. 69. [back
to text] (*38)
Cf. Wynkoop, 37-115. [back
to text] (*39)
Its official name is "The Theodora Sedgwick Bond and William
Ross Bond Reading Room". Its architects were Hartman-Cox.
[back
to text] (*40)
The architects seem to have drawn inspiration from two
sources, apart from Cret's building: a national library
scheme by Etienne-Louis Boullée and Kenwood Library
by Robert Adam (1767-9). See Dixon, John Morris, "With
respect to Cret," Progressive Architecture, July
1983, p. 68. [back
to text] (*41)
Weeks, Christopher, Guide to the Architecture of
Washington, D.C. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994, p. 43. [back
to text] (*42)
See Pressly, William L., A Catalogue of Paintings in the
Folger Shakespeare Library, New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1993, for an account of this and other
paintings mentioned. [back
to text] (*43)
Pressly, pp. 317-20. It meant more to the Folgers than most
others. It was the most expensive painting the Folgers ever
bought (Pressly, p. 2), at a moment (1927) when the plan of
the Library was already taking shape. [back
to text] (*44)
Pressly, p. 320. [back
to text] (*45)
The Washington Post, April 24, 1932, p. 1
[back
to text] (*46)
The Washington Post, April 24, 1932, p. 10. Published
under the title "The Folger Shakespeare Memorial Dedicated,
April 23, 1932; Shakespeare and American Culture," The
Spinning Wheel 12, 1932. [back
to text] (*47)
The Sunday Star, April 24, 1932, p.
1.
[back
to text] (*48)
The Evening Star, April 23, 1932, p. 4. [back
to text] (*49)
Bristol, p. 76. [back
to text] (*50)
The term was probably first used by Winston Churchill in
1941. [back
to text] (*51)
Slade, p. 70. [back
to text] (*52)
The Washington Post, April 24, 1932, p. 10.
[back
to text] (*53)
The Times (London), April 24, 1932, p. 16.
[back
to text] . last changes: August
2001
Shakespeare,
Washington, Lincoln: The Folger Library and the American
appropriation of the Bard
Two
Universities in the United States have approached me to
locate the collection with them, making flattering
offers, providing quarters and supervision for it. But I
have always preferred to consider Washington as its
permanent home, being satisfied that it is of sufficient
value and importance to add to the dignity of your City.
(*17)
[A]
line drawn from the site of the Folger Shakespeare
Memorial through the Capitol building and extended
onward, will all but touch the monument to Washington and
the memorial to Lincoln--the two Americans whose light
also spreads across the world. The amount of deviation of
the extended line will, in fact, be only great enough to
indicate the alteration from the older order which finds
its summation in the name of Washington, for more than
half his lifetime an English subject, albeit an English
colonial, and which again finds its summation in the name
of Lincoln. (*23)
Mr. and Mrs.
Folger desired to see specimens of their collections
displayed in a Gallery recalling the period rooms of our
museums, and, further, they thought that the scholars who
were to work in the Library would feel most at home in
surroundings reminiscent of the England of the XVIth or
XVIIth centuries. On the other hand, the architect and
the consulting architect could readily see that the site
selected, facing a wide and straight avenue of one of the
most classical cities, surrounded by classical buildings
and lying in the very shadow of the classical dome of the
Capitol itself, would be inappropriate for an Elizabethan
building.
Shakespeare
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