The story of how we came to know that the copy of the Shakespeare First Folio now in the Rare Book Department at the Free Library of Philadelphia was once owned and annotated by John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, is featured in this new documentary to mark the quatercentenary of the First Folio’s publication. Jason Scott-Warren and I discuss the “discovery” from our respective sides of the Atlantic: he in Cambridge, where Milton was a student almost four hundred years ago, and me in Philadelphia, where Milton’s copy of Shakespeare now resides.
Narrated by Audra McDonald, the documentary spends time with several other interesting copies of the First Folio and tells the story of its publication in 1623 as well as its enduring influence on the theatrical lives of Shakespeare’s plays. Read more about Making Shakespeare: The First Folio here, and tune in to your local PBS station on Friday, November 17 at 9/8c to watch!
If you want even more content about Milton’s copy of the Shakespeare First Folio, you can browse a digitized copy of the Free Library First Folio here (it’s open access!) and read the full account of how we know the annotator was Milton in an article published in Milton Quarterly last year (it’s not open access, alas). Please contact me for a copy of the article if you would like to read it and do not have institutional access.
UPDATE: You can access the documentary on via PBS Great Performances.