Fortnight of Festivities

April 10th-14th: First Folio on exhibit from 12-2 PM, FHG Library, Special Collections, Room 615

April 10th:

• Opening of Exhibition:  "A Great Variety of Readers: Celebrating 400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio”, at 12 PM, Special Collections, Room 615, FHG Library

• Student (3-12) Sonnet Contest Awards Ceremony, at 4 PM, Special Collections, Room 615, FHG Library

  • Please join us to honor our Philadelphia area student winners of the multiple writing contests held by the Fortnight of Festivities and WCU Poetry Center.

  • To celebrate the First Folio’s anniversary, students in three-grade categories were invited to submit original sonnets, verse, and drama. This afternoon the fruits of their work will be honored. Folger Poetry coordinator, Teri Cross Davis, will be in attendance. 

• Poetry Reading: Teri Cross Davis, Folger Poetry Program Coordinator, 7 PM, Special Collections, Room 615, FHG Library

  • Poetry coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, Teri Cross Davis is an award-winning author. Her honors include receiving the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry for her 2016 collection, Haint. Her books will be available for sale after the reading.

April 11th:

• Edible Shakespeare Contest, from 3-4 PM, FHG Library, Room 252

  • Loosely based on the library tradition of "Edible Book Festivals", the winner of this event will win gift cards ($100 & $50, respectively)! The only parameters are that you make a treat that is Shakespeare-themed in some way, and it needs to be delivered to us by the day of!

  • Examples: It could be something mentioned mentioned in a Shakespeare play, something punny ("Too bee or not too bee"), something graphic that alludes to Shakespeare (Think: Hamlet's skull, the witches in Macbeth, etc.)

  • Creativity is completely up to you - We look forward to your yummy entries!

• Keynote/Opening Talk: Dr. Claire M. L. Bourne, “Milton’s First Folio in Philadelphia and the Myth of Discovery," 7 PM, Philips Autograph Library

  • A professor at Penn State University, Dr. Claire M. L. Bourne works at the intersections of drama, book history, textual studies and more in the early modern period. Her monograph, Typographies of Performance in Early Modern England (OUP, 2020) is the first book-length study of early modern English playbook typography and tells a new history of drama from the period by considering the page designs of plays by Shakespeare and others printed between the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. 

  • With Jason Scott-Warren (University of Cambridge), Dr. Bourne is the co-author of ‘“thy unvalued Booke”: John Milton’s Copy of the Shakespeare First Folio’. This article identifies John Milton as the former owner and annotator of the copy of the Shakespeare First Folio held at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

April 12th: Bookmaking Workshop, from 12-1:30 PM, Main 200

• • Materials provided. Join us as to explore the technology of the printed book, create your own, and leave with a book of your very own making!

April 13th: A Virtual Talk by Dr. Emma Smith, “Four Centuries of Folios," at 3:30 PM
Register Now for this Event.

• • Much of Dr. Emma Smith's recent work has been about the reception of Shakespeare in performance, print, and criticism, and about the scholarly and cultural investments in Shakespearean criticism. In her work on Shakespeare's First Folio, she has combined book historical approaches with work on collecting, historical performance, the editorial tradition and Shakespeare's cultural and economic value over four centuries. 

  • In addition to scholarship on drama in performance, the methodology of writing about theatre, reviewing and its rhetoric, and productive analogies between cinema, film theory, and early modern performance, she has also worked with theatre companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, and Donmar Warehouse. 

  • This Is Shakespeare, her latest book, was a Sunday Times bestseller and has been translated into several other languages. 

April 17th-21st: First Folio on exhibit from 12- 2 PM, FHG Library, Special Collections, Room 615

April 19th: Gerit Quealy, "Shakespeare in the Wild", at 3 PM, FHG Library, Special Collections, Room 615

• • Gerit Quealy is an American writer, editor, and actor. She is best known for Botanical Shakespeare: An Illustrated Compendium of all the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited by the World's Greatest Playwright, in which she teamed up with Japanese artist Sumié Hasegawa.

  • As a journalist, her work has appeared in the NY Times, Huffington Post, NBC, Biography, Woman’s Day, Country Living and a raft of garden magazines, among other outlets. She has been a visiting lecturer and workshop leader at Columbia University, Williams College, CCNY, SUNY-Albany, among others, on subjects ranging from Shakespeare's classical references to works from his contemporaries.

April 20th: Micheal O’Siadhail poetry reading at 4:30 PM, FHG Library, Special Collections, Room 615

• • A leading Irish poet for several decades (awarded the Arts Council’s Marten Toonder Prize for a distinguished career in literature in 1998), Micheal O’Siadhail has produced an incredibly impressive range of poetry culminating in his 2018 work The Five Quintets, five long poems on each of five themes: Making (on the arts); Dealing (on economics), Steering (on politics), Finding (the sciences), and Meaning (on thought in many spheres, including philosophy and theology).

  • O’Siadhail—who is fluent in Irish, French, Norwegian, German, Welsh, Icelandic, Japanese, and Spanish, and has conversational Latvian and Catalan—is noted for both his technical mastery of many classical poetic forms (above all the sonnet), together with his invention of new forms. 

April 21st: Micheal O’Siadhail craft talk, at 11AM, Main 200

April 22nd: Dr. Marc Gagné, "Shakespeare in the Heavens", at 7 PM, Mather Planetarium

• • Shakespeare rose to prominence in London in the 1590s at the height of the Copernican Revolution. By 1612, Tycho Brahe had tracked the planets, Johannes Kepler gave us his three laws, and Galileo Galilei trained his telescope on the sky, revealing the craters of the Moon, sunspots, the Moons of Jupiter, and the full phases of Venus. Shakespeare died just a few months before Galileo's first inquisition in 1616. The First Folio appeared in 1623, the same year as Galileo's Assayer, his penultimate publication. With his final publication in 1632, Galileo would again face the inquisition. He spent the last ten years of his life under house arrest. In this planetarium show we will examine the heavens and the astronomical discoveries of this amazing time in the history of science and literature. 

  • As are other Fortnight events, "Shakespeare and the Heavens" is free and open to the public. However, due to the limited seating in Mather Planetarium, tickets are required, incurring a $2.00 service fee. Here is the link to the ticket website to reserve your seat.

April 20th-22nd: Performances of "Twelfth Night", presented by WCU Department of Theatre, directed by Professor John Bellomo 

• • Twelfth Night tells the story of Viola, a young heroine who washes up on the shores of Illyria, disguises herself as a man, is sent to court a countess and falls hard for a Duke. As she navigates this strange and wonderful new land, she finds her true self and her true love in the process. Celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio with us! Located in the E.O. Bull Center for the Arts. Here is the link for tickets for upcoming shows. 

The Renaissance Fair, from 12-3 PM

• • Free and open to the public! 

FREE outdoor, final Performance of "Twelfth Night"  on the WCU Quad

• • Curtains open at 3 PM, performed on a Globe-like Shakespearean stage!

  • Bring your own blanket or lawn chair. A limited number of chairs will be available under a tent for use.