Folger Finds: Women and Shakespeare

Our galleries have a fresh rotation of books, manuscripts, prints, and performance ephemera. Nearly 30 new objects are on exhibit, including a royal proclamation about the (inflated) price of wine during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a brooding statue of Hamlet produced in Spain, and the early plan for the Folger’s theater to be shaped in the round along with the items featured below: First Folios owned by two 17th-century women, a prop dagger used by a leading actress of the late 19th century, and scripts and programs from a 20th century women’s theater in Japan that’s still performing Shakespeare today. On view in our Shakespeare Exhibition Hall through November 16, 2025.

Early Modern Women and Their First Folios

Here are two First Folios known to have been owned by women who lived in Shakespeare’s own century.

A woman named Margaret By used Folger First Folio 32 to practice her penmanship.

By acknowledges her inexperience with a quill in this awkwardly written and unfinished version of a well-known rhyme. In modernized spelling, it reads:

“Margaret By is my name and
with my pen I write this same
and if my pen had been better
I should . . . “

She neglected to write the last four words: “have mended every letter.”

While we don’t know if By could read Shakespeare, the presence of this book in her household suggests that she would have been at least familiar with his plays.

Olivea Cotton came from a literary family: her aunt was the writer Lucy Hutchinson and her father was the poet Charles Cotton.

Olivea Cotton, who died in 1707, signed her name at the top of the epitaph to Shakespeare in Folger First Folio 54 alongside the signatures of her cousin Elizabeth Hutchinson and a relative named Isabel.

An early hand added character lists and scene locations to the Comedies and identified historical figures in the Histories which indicates that these women were likely interested in both reading and staging the plays.

A leading lady’s dagger

Daggers of various sorts were a part of Shakespeare’s world, his plays, and his stage, from the “poniards” to which Benedick compares Beatrice’s sharp words in Much Ado About Nothing to the “bodkin” of Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” speech to the bloodied weapons in Macbeth.

This prop dagger, also pictured in the masthead above, was used in Augustin Daly’s (1838–1899) mounting of Twelfth Night in 1893. Daly, determined to make this his most spectacular production of Shakespeare to date, made extensive cuts to Shakespeare’s play and doubled the amount of music in an already musically rich production. He also added extravagant special effects and lavish costumes as shown by the velvet and decorative jewels on this dagger. The play was very popular with audiences, touring in New York and Boston before an exceptionally long run of 100 performances in London in 1894. Ada Rehan (1857–1916), Daly’s leading star, wore this dagger as part of her Cesario costume. Despite the play’s dazzle, the production divided critics, some of whom thought Rehan was not suited for the role of Viola/Cesario and preferred she stay typecast in roles like Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew.

All-Women Performances of Shakespeare in Japan

Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted to a variety of classical Japanese styles, including Kabuki and Noh. The plays have also been important to the development of modern performance methods like the Shingeki (New Drama) movement in the early 20th century. The Folger actively collects materials related to Japanese performance because of the inventive, ongoing exchange between Japanese theater and the performance of Shakespeare’s plays. These 20th century materials—programs and commemorative scripts—document productions by the all-female Takarazuka Revue. They were added to the Folger collection in 2021 and 2024.

The all-female Takarazuka Revue was founded in 1914 by the owner of the Hankyu Railway in the Kansai region—a cultural center in southern-central Japan whose cities included Osaka and Kyoto—in order to encourage train travel. He wanted to provide family-friendly theater and instill the principles of “modesty, fairness, and grace” in his young performers. The women would first study as students before becoming full performers in the company. As the popularity of the group increased, different troupes were formed to meet the increasing and varied demands of eager audiences. Today, there are five troupes: the Hana (Flower) Troupe, the Tsuki (Moon) Troupe, the Snow (Yuki) Troupe, the Hoshi (Star) Troupe, and the Sora (Cosmos) Troupe. The pamphlets and programs, pictured below, are from performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by two of the oldest troupes in the revue: Tsuki (Moon) and Yuki (Snow) Troupes.

On the far left, the program is for the Moon troupe’s 1947 performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Manon Lescaut. It features many photographs, including playing Romeo in Moon troupe’s Romeo and Juliet from 1933. The cover shows Sayo Fukuko (1922–96) as Lysander. On the Revue’s 100th Anniversary, she was one of the first 100 theater professionals inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014 like her fellow castmate Chikage Awashima.

The pamphlet in the center documents the Snow Troupe’s 1947 performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It includes a script for 12 scenes and sketches of the set designs. The cover features Michiko Asakura in costume as Hermia.

The commemorative script on the far right documents the Moon Troupe’s 1947 double-bill performance of Manon Lescaut and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The pamphlet includes the script for 12 of the scenes performed and photographs of the cast. The cover shows Chikage Awashima (1924–2012), who played Puck and was one of the first 100 theater professionals inducted into the Takarazuka Hall of Fame in 2014.