Folger Magazine

Who decides what’s in a canon? Jeremy Lopez on English literary history

Etiquette in early modern England (part 2)

Etiquette in early modern England (part 1)

The rise and fall of sumptuary laws: Rules for dressing in Shakespeare's England

The well-dressed Elizabethan: Renaissance fashions as social markers

How much has parenting actually changed since Shakespeare's time?

The smallest Shakespeares in the Folger collection

Off the Shelf: A Shakespearean Botanical, The Battle of Agincourt, Year of the Fat Knight, and more
Here’s a round-up of Shakespeare-related books, fiction and nonfiction, that are on our must-read list. Ira’s Shakespeare Dream Glenda Armand (author), Floyd Cooper (illustrator) This story of famed African-American actor Ira Aldridge, who believed he could be a great Shakespearean…

The Cotswold Olympicks
The Ancient Greeks may hold the franchise on Olympic wrestling—but how would they have fared against a 17th-century British shin-kicker? In 1612 in the tiny village of Chipping Campden, Robert Dover opened the first Cotswold Olympicks, ushering in a…

Ask a Librarian: Summertime in Elizabethan England
Q: I know about Queen Elizabeth I’s summer progresses, but how did ordinary people spend their summers in Shakespeare’s time? A: For most Elizabethans, summer presented little opportunity for a vacation from regular work routines. There were still farms to tend,…

The Elizabethan Garden: 11 plants Shakespeare would have known well
The text for this blog post is adapted from an article in the Summer 2009 issue of Folger Magazine. Shakespeare, who grew up in a riverside country town and was the grandchild of prosperous farmers, refers with familiarity to an extraordinary number of plants…

How Queen Elizabeth I spent her summer vacation
Elizabeth I arriving at Nonsuch, Franz Hogenberg after Georg Hoefnagel. Hand-colored engraving from Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum, ca. 1598. Folger Shakespeare Library. (Click the image to see a zoomable version in the Folger’s digital image collection.) You thought you had…