![]() As I want to highlight the issue of divisions, as well as sharing, between individuals and within an individual I have adopted the physics term “fission-fusion,” which has been used by ethology to describe dynamic social networks that periodically merge and divide, and I have reapplied it specifically to cognition in order to capture the malleable and shifting nature of the cognitive units formed.Ĭontemporary Shakespeare studies have gained a new perspective and created an unprecedented synergy in dramatic criticism with the introduction of Cultural Materialism and New Historicism as critical theories. These capacities both afford and require boundaries and flow between the constituent parts of the self, both as regards those within skull or skin, and as regards those in the world. These related notions of the mind as social, both in Renaissance fictional and factual narratives and in current cognitive science, are understood to be due to human psychophysiological capacities. I focus on the linked concepts that a multiplicity of agents can operate within a single human being, and conversely that multiple individuals can form a cognitive unit. To further ground the case, it begins with two brief overviews: firstly, on narratological approaches to drama and their particular relevance to Renaissance drama, and secondly, on various current approaches to social cognition. This analysis is supplemented by a few references to Montaigne’s Essays, whose influence on Shakespeare and concern with the nature of the mind and self are long established. “That’s absolutely the point, is to eliminate the intimidation and to make sure that everyone knows that they’re welcome here.This paper examines how Renaissance notions of the mind and the subject, as constrained and constituted by social means, are narrated and staged in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. “We’ve added elevators, we’ve eliminated barriers, and we really made the space accessible to all audiences in a way that it wasn’t before,” says Taylor Kidd. The project has been 13 years in the making, and is open to everyone, free of charge. ![]() The library plans to exhibit all 82 copies in a renovated underground space, “purpose built with both appropriate climate, but also the ability to control light in a way that we really didn’t have before,” says Ruth Taylor Kidd, Folger’s chief financial officer overseeing the construction. The edition we saw - Henry Folger’s favorite - will be featured in an upcoming, permanent display at the library, set to open to the public on Nov. So really, when you get down to that sort of leaf by leaf examination of these copies, almost all of them have been manipulated, changed, improved over many, many years.” “ dealers had what they called morgues, where they had damaged copies of books, where they could supply leaves to perfect and sophisticate other copies that they could then market as complete,” Prickman says. Greg Prickman, the Folger Library’s Director of Collections, pages through Henry Folger’s favorite First Folio. Imagine a patchwork skin like Frankenstein’s creature. Turning over the pages, Prickman explained that the book had gotten changed and “sophisticated” over time - a process where damaged leaves would be grafted with others to complete the volume. “This particular copy was discovered in the 19th century on a shelf in essentially a building associated with an English country house, where somebody was cleaning it out and came upon it and tossed it down to the person that was there with them and said, ‘This one’s nothing. Prickman showed Here & Now’s Scott Tong a particularly large edition that was almost thrown out. across the street from the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress’ Jefferson building.Įach First Folio has its own history. So the Folgers kept at it, and today the research library they founded houses the largest Shakespeare collection in the world. Maybe that’s enough.’ And Henry Folger said at one point, each copy has a reason for its existence.” ![]() “There were points in the Folger’s collecting where in correspondence there’s this sense of, ‘Well, maybe we should slow down. “I think obsession is a good word,” says Greg Prickman, Folger’s director of collections. Thanks to a buying spree that founders Henry and Emily Folger made over a century ago, the library already owns 82 copies. The Folger Shakespeare Library won’t be competing to acquire the book. The famous “Droeshout portrait” of Shakespeare from the First Folio.
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