I had the privilege of participating in this weekend’s Folger Institute symposium, “Shakespeare’s Theatrical Documents.” What follows is an attempt to synthesize some of the main threads of thought that emerged out of the weekend. These comments represent my own take-aways from the event. If my account seems abstract, it's only because I don't want to speak for the other participants, whose exceptional work for the symposium will surely find its way into a more public place over the next few years.
Organized by Tiffany Stern (Oxford University) and Owen Williams (Folger Institute), the symposium was designed to...
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Last year, I started reserving a day in each of my Shakespeare courses for students to "make" quartos. I wrote at some length (almost exactly a year ago) about the experience of making Q1 Hamlet with my students at VCU and posted instructions, information about supplies for the activity, and a link to the sheets (which I made from EEBO printouts).
This semester, I'm teaching a senior seminar called "Early Modern Drama: Manuscript, Print, Performance" that focuses on the material-textual processes that facilitated the making of theatrical performance and printed texts of the plays. So far, my students have reverse-engineered scribal backstage plots of Doctor Faustus, performed a scene from the same play using cue scripts, and "made" quartos.