Spotlight: Fourth Folio Inscription
We thought this might be of interest to @booktraces, as well as to some of you. We hold two Shakespeare Folios: the second, published in 1632, and the fourth, published in 1685. Our Fourth Folio was apparently owned by a woman, who inscribed instructions for the volume’s disposition on the page before the first play.
The late Dr. Virginia Haas, who was one of the principle researchers for the MLA’s New Variorum Shakespeare Project when it was centered here at the UWM Libraries, describes the passage:
One of the interesting things about UWM's copy of F4 is an inscription that appears on a preliminary leaf. Written in a spidery hand that is probably 17th century, the inscription serves as a will of sorts. The owner of this Folio, one Catherine Handman, bequeaths this object to her minister [the Reverend Mr. John Ridly] or his surviving son "When the Almighty shall send the Messenger of Death to my frail body." Her parting line, "Pray Look After It," gives us a sense not only of the esteem in which Shakespeare's work was held, but of how precious the artifact--the Folio itself--was. If there hadn't been many, many book-owners who felt this way, we would probably not have this original volume . . . today.
