Next available on Sunday 2–10 p.m.

Additional Options

Shakespeare in Wisconsin 2016

April 8, 2016

In concert with the celebration of Shakespeare in Wisconsin 2016, we are pleased to announce that our copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio is now available in digitized form in the UW-Madison Libraries Digital Collections. For more about our copy and details of the digitizing project, see blog posts from the perspectives of Special Collections and UW Digital Library Services.

Title page of the Second Folio. From the Second Folio, Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Title page of the Second Folio. From the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Binding by Riviere & Son, London.
Binding by Riviere & Son, London.

The virtual table of contents provides a guide to the contents complete with any variant spellings in the original but with the addition of page numbers. As Jesse Henderson of UW Digital Collections Center explains, when pagination errors were obvious, the correct number was added in square brackets; there were some jumps in pagination in the print volume, and those were simply transcribed. Moreover, the pagination restarted for the histories and then again for the tragedies.

Page 1 of the Histories.
Page 1 of the Histories.
Page 1 of the Tragedies. Most of Tooke's annotations occur in this play.
Page 1 of the Tragedies, showing some of the copious annotations by John Horne Tooke on “The tragedie of Troylus and Cressida.”

Additional images showing details of annotations in the gutter appear after the page in question. For example,

Page 45, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor."
Page 45, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor.”

and a closer view of the annotation in John Horne Tooke’s hand, substituting “Ford” for “Shal” on page 45:

Detail from p. 45.
Border for "To the great variety of readers."

And be sure to mark your calendars for the kickoff events of Lit Fest: Shakespeare in Wisconsin on April 20, including an evening with Anna Deavere Smith.