Gallery Two: The School Boy

The emergence of Shakespearean texts

Then, the whining school-boy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

The second age reflects on the first steps on the road towards scholarship, a bit like the unwilling journey of the whining school-boy. Although some of Shakespeare’s plays that were performed at the Globe theatre were gathered together and printed for the first time in the 1623 Folio after his death, others were published in quarto form – the period's version of a cheap paperback – during his lifetime, an acknowledgement of the popularity of his work. Quarto versions of plays such as Hamlet and Othello can surprise us by how different they are from what we would expect today. As interest in Shakespeare continued throughout the seventeenth century, three more editions were produced in 1632, 1664 and 1685 – the last two including works that we no longer recognise as Shakespeare’s. The Library holds all four folios – perhaps one of its greatest treasures.