14. Michael Witmore on the Folger Shakespeare Library

Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., Michael Witmore, talks to Paul about the history of the library and some of his favourite items in its collection, as well as the Folger's iconic location.

Transcript

Paul Edmondson (00:00):

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Paul Edmondson (00:15):

My name's Paul Edmondson. I'm delighted to introduce Dr. Michael Witmore. Before becoming director of the world's most impressive Shakespeare collection, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., he was a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He's a scholar of Shakespeare and early modern literature, a scholar of rhetoric, and a pioneer in the digital analysis of Shakespeare's texts. His publications include Shakespearean Metaphysics, Landscapes of the Passing Strange, Reflections from Shakespeare, and Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion, co-edited with David Loewenstein. Michael, welcome to Shakespeare Alive.

Michael Witmore (00:56):

Oh, I'm so delighted to be here, Paul.

Paul Edmondson (00:58):

I know you are in Washington, D.C. What is the Folger Shakespeare Library, and how did it start?

Michael Witmore (01:05):

The Folger Shakespeare Library opened to the public in 1932. It was the passion of a couple, Henry and Emily Folger, who had been collecting Shakespeare's works for over two decades. This couple, they were childless. He was president of Standard Oil, and she had, as a master's thesis at Vassar, written about the sources of Shakespeare's plays. Henry Folger had significant resources. If he had chosen to collect art, I actually think we wouldn't have this collection because he would not have been able to compete with his boss, the owner of Standard Oil. But he chose books, and his wife knew the First Folio was a key volume. For your listeners, who probably know, the First Folio published in 1623 is the first attempt at assembling Shakespeare's plays. It contains 18 plays that are printed nowhere else. This book serves as the core of our collection, and the Folger's collected 82 of these.

Paul Edmondson (02:14):

How many years were they collecting 82 First Folios?

Michael Witmore (02:17):

I don't know exactly, but I think it was over 20, and that collection is closed. They're numbered 1 through 82. Some of them are fragments. But as a record of what Shakespeare was up to and what his friends felt needed to be memorialized, it's a very important book. Now, alongside that collection, they also collected Shakespeareana and any particular item that they felt could illuminate Shakespeare. When you hear the phrase ‘bare bodkin’, and you need to know what a bodkin is, well, if we can find an armory text, then we could point to a picture of the bodkin, which is a dagger. In a way, the collection illustrates the works of Shakespeare. Over time, it's grown into one of the largest early modern collections that focuses mostly on Northern Europe but does arrive, eventually, at the creation of the Atlantic world by around the 17... Our collection goes to 1730.

Paul Edmondson (03:17):

Now, Henry Folger himself did not live to see the building completed, did he?

Michael Witmore (03:21):

He did not. He died as the building was being constructed, and his wife finished it. The building is an art deco classical building. I'm just looking over at the US Supreme court, and the US Capitol, and the Library of Congress. The couple wanted this building to be at the footsteps of American government. That is a very significant, I think, gesture. Because if you look at our building, and I do hope your visitors and your listeners will also come see us when we reopen to the public in 2022/23, what they were thinking was that poetry and history have a major role to play in the life of a democracy, and that we need those voices and those resources here at this particular spot where we are, where words matter so much, whether it's legislation, oration in a deliberative body, or the record of what's collected at the library of Congress.

Michael Witmore (04:20):

That was, I think, their big idea, which is: if you want a democracy that has a rich civic life, you will need poetry and history. The building is also a memorial to Shakespeare. In a way, it is a copy of the First Folio. The quotations on our building are spelled exactly as the words appear in the First Folio. It was conceived as a living memorial to England's greatest poet, a gift to the United States.

Paul Edmondson (04:51):

It opened on the same day as the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre here in Stratford-upon-Avon: 23rd of April 1932.

Michael Witmore (04:58):

What a remarkable thing. I think of the three legs of a stool that represent the connection that we have to Shakespeare, in addition to all of the working classrooms and on stages and around the world. But Stratford being that place where Shakespeare grew up and drew breath, where he encountered nature and so many of the things that he writes about so beautifully, the reconstructive Globe Theater in Southwark, which is roughly the place where these works were performed and is hugely evocative of that. In our case, the collection here at Washington fills out the picture because these are the sources for the plays and the texts that connect us in a material way to this great writer.

Paul Edmondson (05:45):

It's a brave new world with lots of the old world collected there, isn't it? I wonder if you could give us a sense of the richness of the Folger’s collections and perhaps some of your most favorite items?

Michael Witmore (05:58):

I would love to do that. We will be showing this material in our new exhibition galleries. But, for example, this might not be the first thing you would think of. We have a small volume of Shakespeare's poems, which was carried in the pocket of American lyric poet, Walt Whitman. He has signed it on the flyleaf, and it's one of these wonderful, almost handshakes between two really powerful writers. For me, it's the touchpoint of Renaissance lyric poetry in American lyric poetry. It's one of those direct connections.

Michael Witmore (06:36):

Another example, we collect the quartos of Shakespeare's plays. There is a really significant collection of this smaller format version of his plays and of all the other playwrights who are active in this period. There's a unique copy. That means there's only one of a quarto version of Titus Andronicus, which was discovered in a lottery wrapper. It was unbound, and that managed to get into our collection. That's a truly unique and precious item that connects us to that play and to Shakespeare.

Michael Witmore (07:14):

Then, finally, this is another odd one. But we have a bundle of sticks that was collected on the grounds of new place and were labelled as being collected from the grounds of new place and are actually preserved in our collection. There are actually physical, almost relics of the Birthplace and Shakespeare's time there that have also managed to get an art collection. If you-

Paul Edmondson (07:44):

So leaves and branches from Stratford-upon-Avon [crosstalk 00:07:47]-

Michael Witmore (07:47):

Oh, perfect. Yes. If you took the collection and lined it up in a linear form, it would be 22,000 linear feet of rare material. It's an extraordinary collection in breadth. It covers everything from horsemanship to swordsmanship, to botany, to military matters, to finance, really so many aspects of the early modern world are represented there. As you know, Paul, Shakespeare had a front seat to some of the most significant changes in Europe, certainly in the West: the creation of urban centers, the creation of professional theater, or the rise of science, creation of joint-stock companies, the rise of insurance, international exchange, colonization, so many of the pieces of the modern world that we live with, some for better, and some for worse are there and visible. That's one thing that remains exciting, I think, for our collection, is that those of us who are trying to understand that period and how it affects us and that complex legacy, we need sources like these.

Paul Edmondson (08:56):

What are your favorite items in your collection? I mean, there you are with this extraordinary treasure. I wonder when you go into work on a morning, you think ‘I’m so pleased I work here because such and such is here’.

Michael Witmore (09:09):

Well, the Whitman copy of the sonnets is possibly... Well, it's one of my favorites. Another is the macro manuscript, which is a manuscript of a medieval morality play that has one of the very first illustrations of a playing space in Europe. It's a delicate manuscript, and it's rarely shown, but it has one of the deepest roots. I think it connects us to a performance practice that is centuries, centuries-old and is largely lost to us. To have a precious picture of that feels really exciting.

Michael Witmore (09:49):

Another one of my favorites is a version of Montaigne's essays that was translated in 1603, which Shakespeare probably knew because parts of Montaigne's essays surface and seem to influence the Tempest. But we have a copy of that book that was bought by a Hollywood producer named Jules Furthman, who wrote the screenplay to Mutiny on the Bounty. Actually, it was through his wife. She brought it to his attention at a shop she saw in LA, and he chose to buy it. But it is annotated fully with the reactions of an early modern reader who was quite literate, someone who knew classical literature, someone who could read the quotation, someone who just really understood this book.

Michael Witmore (10:39):

Furthman took this volume and said, "I think this is William Shakespeare's copy of Montaigne”. One of the things he did with this book was he had a birthday party, and he invited F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Dashiell Hammett to come to his house, and they pass this book around and read from it and debated whether this belonged to Shakespeare. That's one of those items that has an amazing provenance. It's been in the hands of some interesting people.

Paul Edmondson (11:13):

Did they all sign it?

Michael Witmore (11:15):

They did not. I'm not sure how we would feel historically about that, but I think it would be okay if Faulkner signed a folio. But it speaks to that passion that is sometimes rational, sometimes irrational to really touch things that Shakespeare touched. We dream of having access to Shakespeare's working mind and his poetic mind prior to the creation of the works, or even we'd love to understand his reactions to the works and what he would say to actors. The potential, the tempting bit is to think maybe someday we would encounter a source that really could illuminate Shakespeare's process in that way.

Paul Edmondson (12:09):

How long have you worked at the Folger?

Michael Witmore (12:12):

I've worked here for nine years. I'll start year 10 on July 1st. It's been quite a journey. I came as an academic. That training is invaluable to the leader of the Folger. It is a non-profit institution with at least five different distinct functions, from education to performing arts to being a direct funder of Shakespeare research and research in the early modern period. We exhibit materials, and we serve scholars. All of those things have different needs. It's been an exciting and sometimes very challenging part of my job to understand how those pieces go together.

Paul Edmondson (12:54):

What have you come most to enjoy about the role and why?

Michael Witmore (12:58):

I love seeing the pieces go together. I'll give you an example of that. We have some terrific documentation of Davenant's Macbeth and a series of scholars who have worked on that material. Several years ago, we did a performance of Davenant's Macbeth with the advice and help of scholars who have been working with these materials. But the ability to see a different Shakespeare from a different period come and actually be performed as art, but also to have the knowledge that, "Hey, that the collection that informed this is right downstairs." That is really extraordinary.

Michael Witmore (13:44):

The other piece that I find gratifying, the most gratifying thing, is I can serve this institution and serve its mission, which is increasingly complex as the humanities become themselves, I think, more in doubt as a resource for our society and community. That's always a challenge.

Michael Witmore (14:06):

But the other thing that I find inspiring is when members of government decide to come and spend time in the Folger. The chief justice has come. Many Supreme Court justices that become legislators are here often. To be able to see Shakespeare's works or materials from this period, speaking to people who make difficult decisions has really been an important thing for me to see because it shows me that there really is a role for literature, and history, and theater to play in a society that is trying to figure itself out.

Paul Edmondson (14:44):

You also have a theatre there. I mean, you mentioned the performance of Davenant's Macbeth. But it seems to me that the construction of the Folger is very similar or basically the same structure to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, or what was the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre: a performance space, a gallery, and a library. The three components of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the Folger Shakespeare Library are the same, aren't they?

Michael Witmore (15:12):

It's such an interesting connection, Paul. Our theatre is the first permanent indoor Shakespearian theatre in, I believe, North America, so indoor or outdoor. But it's the first one that was built to serve in a permanent basis for, we think, performance and oratory. It's a beautiful theatre. It has a gorgeous woodcarving, a beautiful stage that's framed.

Paul Edmondson (15:38):

Evocative of the Elizabethan-style theatre, of course.

Michael Witmore (15:41):

Yeah, absolutely. The architect actually - we know because we have his drawings - he was reading books on Elizabethan theatre and sketching from those books. The two columns on our stage are clearly related to The Globe or The Swan. That's a pretty exciting thing to see how they imagined it because they first had to imagine before building it.

Anjna Chouhan (16:07):

If you've been enjoying ‘Shakespeare Alive’, please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or on your usual podcast platform. If you'd like to suggest guests for us to interview in our next series, please complete our survey by visiting Shakespeare.org.uk/future. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook. Just remember to use the hashtag #ShakespeareAlive.

Paul Edmondson (16:38):

I remember my first time in the Folger Shakespeare Library. I was there helping to adjudicate the school's Shakespeare Festival in the theatre. I remember seeing it over a few days packed with hugely excited high-school students from the Washington D.C. area in that wonderful theater space. You mentioned the government officials and the chief justices coming in to spend time researching Shakespeare, consulting your material. Do you see the Folger Shakespeare Library having any civic responsibilities? If so, what are they?

Michael Witmore (17:11):

Well, we have two. I think the first is because of where we are. We speak for more than Shakespeare. Shakespeare is vitally important. But I think the deeper role and truth of what we have is a way of thinking about literature, history, poetry, and theater and understanding that sometimes the lives of great numbers of people depend on what their leaders read and see, and being here to educate and inspire people in leadership positions directly and to put in front of them some of the most stories that we know. How do you give away power? Well, King Lear would be an important play to understand that. Is it even possible? What do you do when your advisors are lying to you? There's so many Shakespeare plays that deal with bad counsel. How is it that courtiers enable people in power to do things that are bad and wrong? There are, again, many plays that help us understand that.

Michael Witmore (18:21):

I think, Paul, that work tends to be cautionary. When John Adams, one of the American founders, was thinking about how to create American democracy, he actually read the history plays in chronological order twice. He wrote to his son saying these plays of Shakespeare show us that human beings are jealous of power and often self-serving and self-deceiving. That's why it's very important to create a government that puts checks on any individual's access to power. I think Adam saw that there was a direct connection between divided government and the capacity for self-serving, self-dealing that we see so clearly in Shakespeare's history plays. There's an example, Paul, of a truly direct connection between the stories we tell and the materials we have and how we understand, at least in this country, are divided government. It is the role of art, literature, and history to caution us and to remind us that human beings are often fools with incomplete knowledge. I just think there's a humility there that we need.

Paul Edmondson (19:36):

I wonder if the rhetoric of healing has crept into your government statements and national media in recent times, Michael, and whether Shakespeare has a part to play in that.

Michael Witmore (19:47):

Paul, I think we're trying to figure that out. As I look out my window, I actually see a security fence with razor wire that is more or less permanently installed to prevent people from storming the United States Capitol. It will take, I think, years to understand what happened and what that meant. But the conversations that are happening in the United States right now, the word that I keep coming up on is reckoning. How do we as a society that strives, hopefully, aspires to live in community with one another, in an environment where wrongs have been done and have not been acknowledged or named? What is the role of cultural institutions in naming those wrongs, especially if they're involved in presenting history? I'm not sure we're at the healing place. I'm just not. I think we're in the reckoning phase. We're sizing up the problem, and that's an urgently necessary thing.

Paul Edmondson (20:59):

The diagnostic phase comes before the healing.

Michael Witmore (21:02):

I think the second area, where there's some ambiguity… As you well know, Shakespeare has also been used in a colonial context to really create a hierarchy of the good and who is capable of being good, who is capable of acting with reason and deliberation. That legacy is damaging. Being able to demonstrate awareness of that, while also talking about the power of these stories, either their imaginative power or their associative language, how those things remain a resource for potentially many, many people, even those who are in the course of struggle for social justice. There is, I think, a significant record of advocates for civil rights, social justice, racial justice, looking at Shakespeare as a place where there is power and finding ways to channel that power.

Michael Witmore (22:09):

I think of Dr. King's speech on the mall, about a mile west of us, where he quoted Richard III when he was talking about the winter of discontent that African-Americans faced in the United States as the civil rights struggle went on. Why Dr. King knew that that particular poetic turn would tap into something that he needed to make his own, and in fact, totally did, we have a complex history there. Part of healing, and reconciliation, and reckoning in my book, I think, is trying to understand both sides of that picture because Shakespeare does remain a resource.

Michael Witmore (22:54):

In the United States, he's the most widely performed and taught playwright. Probably the next 50 years of theatre and performance and teaching are going to have an "and" after it. I think it will always be a touchstone to look at Shakespeare and say, "How did these works change English? How did they inspire different writers?" But also, what else should we be reading? It's not at every moment. Sometimes people, I think, imply that at every difficult moment we should be reading William Shakespeare. Well, maybe we should be reading Chinua Achebe, or James Baldwin, or Toni Morrison, and maybe we need that knowledge more urgently. All of that, I think, comes under the heading of literature, and the humanities, and our need to just learn more through these great texts.

Paul Edmondson (23:45):

What are your ongoing intentions for the Folger Shakespeare Library, say, over the next five years? What would you like to see happen?

Michael Witmore (23:53):

I aspire, I think, and with the entire staff, we all aspire to continue to deliver the research environment that is really peerless of the ability for researchers to immediately retrieve many, many items, including walking and browsing our modern stacks. It has been a key part of why scholars are coming from the UK to work in our reading room. We want to make sure that that experience is even better and that more scholars and a more diverse range of interests and scholars are able to use and benefit from the collection.

Michael Witmore (24:32):

The second is to follow through on what I think is our part of our identity, which is to actively demonstrate the ways in which literature, history, poetry, theatre are able to be a resource to us as we try to live in community in a complicated world. There are real resources in the humanities for that. I think the humanities needs a demonstration point or two, or three, or ten. Just as the work you do, that the Birthplace is illuminating something for us. We aim to be able to do the same thing in, for us, some larger facilities as we renovate, which is what's going on now.

Paul Edmondson (25:18):

I'm thinking about, as you speak, how without libraries there would be no civilization.

Michael Witmore (25:24):

Well, certainly not of the kind that we associate with modernity. In a way, they're the ultimate hollow deck. You can actually… as Machiavelli said, "I put on my best robes when I go into my library because I'm conversing with people I respect, and I do this because it's a real conversation." In a library, you really can get in a conversation with someone who lived 400 years ago or someone who lives on a different continent, and it's relatively cheap. You can do it in a public library. Our library is not cheap. It's expensive to run because we take care of the materials, but that's a really powerful thing. Why libraries have that special place has something to do with their power to push back against the oblivion that I associate with Prospero drowning his book and the possibility, which is always present that we will lose our connections to the life, the artistry, and the thoughts of people in the past. That is the shadow that is cast over every collecting institution, and they take shape because we don't want to lose things.

Paul Edmondson (26:44):

If you were going to deposit something into the collections of the Birthplace Trust, what would it be and why?

Michael Witmore (26:53):

Paul, that's really a profound question because not only would you take great care of it, but you would help to explain it. Well, of course, we don't give anything away in our collection because we're here to preserve it. But I think of the catalogues that Henry and Emily Folger would look through at the end of his workday as they were building this collection. Those catalogues show me they're really a touchstone for the lives of two Americans, who, somewhere in Brooklyn, were thinking about how to honor and to commemorate this writer in a former colony and entirely different continent.

Michael Witmore (27:37):

I think it's a wonderful window. I think it would be interesting for visitors to Stratford to think about the leap from Warwickshire all of way to the mid-Atlantic and to the Northeast of the United States, and the sense that, meanwhile, in the 1880s, 1890s, 1910s, in this country, there were people thinking so deeply about how they could... Of course, they were inquisitive. But their intention was to make it possible for many, many people to enjoy and study. I think it's part of our joint mission to talk about that legacy and those memories. It's not a terribly rare thing, but it's an important window.

Paul Edmondson (28:29):

This would enable us always to talk about, as it were, transatlantic dialogue and have international conversations and think about Shakespearean influences in both directions.

Michael Witmore (28:39):

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly.

Paul Edmondson (28:42):

If you were, then, to return to the Folger Shakespeare Library with something from our collection to take back with you, what would you take and why?

Michael Witmore (28:52):

Actually, there's something very specific, Paul. You have a very large-format book, which holds lottery cards from the tickets that were sold. You can say more about this item because it's, I know, one of the highlights of your collection. But it actually shows those who purchase tickets, and Henry Folger purchased one.

Paul Edmondson (29:16):

It's an enormous book.

Michael Witmore (29:17):

It is enormous-

Paul Edmondson (29:19):

It's a specially designed-to-be-too-big book. It's really a big book of American love of Shakespeare, isn't it? All of those names, and addresses, and people all donated money to the building of the Memorial Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Michael Witmore (29:37):

The names and the addresses are a sign of just how many wanted to remember this writer or to talk about, I mean, in a way to say that they'd had these experiences reading or seeing Shakespeare, and they want it to turn it into something.

Paul Edmondson (29:53):

Well, I love to think of you there, as it were, dressing up to go in and have conversations with writers of the past. I love that image of you holding the book, which will not be drowned, and the staff, which will not be buried, wearing a magical cloak a bit like Prospero himself, Michael, but there you are in Washington D.C. doing this.

Michael Witmore (30:16):

Well. You've described the working uniform of the entire staff. I mean, it's not visible, but I think all of us know that we're here to serve not only the memory and the factual past that we document but also the ongoing interpretation. As I walk into the reading room, it's quite a formal reading room, Paul, as you know, meaning you could see someone walking in an academic gown.

Paul Edmondson (30:49):

Or a cloak with stars on it.

Michael Witmore (30:51):

Absolutely. I had this experience of just thinking about people who are working like superheroes and how you want to demonstrate that. We had an exhibition on the law, and Chief Justice John Roberts, came over with his clerks to look at the exhibition. Our exhibition hall is immediately adjacent to the reading room. There's some double doors that lead into that reading room.

Michael Witmore (31:15):

The reading room is absolutely silent, as you can imagine. At the end of the tour, I asked Chief Justice Roberts if he and his clerks would like to see some scholars who are working with this material. I thought he probably wouldn't say yes, but he, in fact, did say yes. In the middle of a workday, those two doors opened up, and his entire entourage, including a quite significant security team, walked into the reading room. As we looked around, the room was not only silent, but no one looked up. That was one of the proudest moments I've had leading the Folger, then being able to turn to Chief Justice Roberts and to say, none of these people knows that we're here because they are immersed in a world that is 400 years prior. Their ability to put on that cape and fly and do that, they are seeing something that is beyond us. It was just so humbling to know that this is chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. It's a pretty powerful and important person. No one cared, just extraordinary.

Paul Edmondson (32:32):                                                                                    

Well, I love that image of devotion, and discovery, and civilization to end with Michael. Thank you very much, indeed. Such a pleasure to be with you, Paul, and I look forward to coming back to the Birthplace Trust and to visiting Stratford.

Anjna Chouhan (32:50):

Thank you for listening to this episode of Shakespeare Alive with Paul. Please join me next week when I talk to Phil Bowen and Sue Best from the Shakespeare Link, and they tell me all about their beautiful Willow Globe. If you'd like to find out more about the houses, connections, research, and education activity of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, head over to our website Shakespeare.org.uk, where you can also make a donation to help us fulfill our mission to Sarah Shakespeare's legacy with the world.