Shakespeare’s First Folio on display at UCA

CONWAY — On this 400th anniversary year of William Shakespeare’s death, an original First Folio of his plays is coming to the University of Central Arkansas’ Baum Gallery.

The First Folio will be on display at the Baum Gallery from June 7 through July 12 and can be viewed from 12:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The exhibition and events surrounding it are free and open to the public.

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which owns 82 of the originals, wanted to exhibit one in all 50 states during 2016, said Mary Ruth Marotte, executive director of the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater. UCA bid against other colleges in Arkansas for the exhibition.

“It was sort of like a grant application,” Marotte said. She said the library officials wanted assurance of tight security, community partners and planned activities that would encourage a large number of people to view the folio.

“Their goal was to reach as many people in every state as possible,” said Rebekah Scallet, producing artistic director for the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre.

“We feel very lucky to be hosting this during the festival,” Marotte said, adding that perhaps the fact that Conway has a Shakespeare Festival gave UCA a leg up on obtaining the book. This is the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre’s 10th season, and the kickoff performance this year will be A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Because the original book will be under glass and untouchable, facsimiles of the work for visitors to pore over will be available.

The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare exhibit will open at 12:30 p.m. June 7 in the gallery. An opening reception will begin at 6 p.m. in McCastlain Ballroom with a performer in this year’s festival declaiming the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet.

Docent-led tours will be available at 2 p.m. each day. Marotte said most of the docents have been drawn from the Conway Shakespeare Club, one of the oldest literary clubs in Arkansas. Established in 1894 by Hendrix College professor F.S. Key with eight local women, the club now boasts 30 members.

Two Family Friday events pertaining to the folio have been planned: Create a Folio, featuring Eric Binnie, a retired professor of theater at Hendrix, and Wendy Lucas, chairwoman of the UCA History Department, at 3 p.m. June 10 in the Fireplace Room of McCastlain Hall; and Family Friday With the Folio at 3 p.m. June 17 at the Faulkner County Library, 1900 Tyler St.

During Shakespeare’s lifetime, some individual plays were published in quarto editions, Scallet said, but never all the plays at once. But after Shakespeare’s death in 1616, John Heminges and Henry Condell, members of Shakespeare’s acting company, decided that all of his plays should be published.

In 1623, 750 folios, so called because of the large paper size, were published. The paper size “made it different from all other publications of Shakespeare’s works before,” Scallet said.

This was an amazing feat, considering the status of printing at the time.

“This was unusual for a playwright,” Scallet said, adding that most of the folios printed were of a religious nature. “The idea was to put all his works together so they would last into posterity.”

Only 234 original folios remain.

“A month ago, they found a copy that no one knew about in Scotland on an island,” Scallet said.

­Pericles, Prince of Tyre and Two Noble Kinsmen were omitted from the folio; no one knows why. One theory is that people suspected then, as they do now, that Shakespeare didn’t write them. Another play, Troilus and Cressida, was included at the last minute and is not listed in the contents section of all the folios.

Other activities revolving around the exhibit include the following:

• The First Folio as a Commercial Enterprise, a lecture by Rosalyn Knutson, professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will be presented at 3 p.m. June 7 at Baum Gallery. The First Folio was dedicated to the average reader, or he who “can but spell,” Scallet said, and was meant to make money, as were Shakespeare’s plays.

• Pre-Show Talk: What if A Midsummer Night’s Dream Had Been Left Out of the First Folio? by Knutson, will take place at 6:30 p.m. June 11 in the Art Lecture Hall.

• Masterclass: Acting With the Folio, by Scallet, will be offered at 4 p.m. June 18 in the Fireplace Room in McCastlain Hall.

• A participatory educators’ workshop for teachers of every level who are interested in learning how to use

Shakespeare’s plays and the First Folio in the classroom will be presented at 3 p.m. June 25 in the Fireplace Room, and reservations can be made by calling (501) 852-0702.

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