The Shakespeare Treasures

Within the Sir John Ritblat Gallery of the British Library are several wondrous treasures related to Shakespeare. In another post, I boasted of seeing Shakespeare's signature with my own eyes, and in this post, I would like to describe the other phenomenal documents I beheld.

In the Shakespeare display in the gallery are...

Benjamin Jonson's The Masque of Queens (1609). Jonson's The Masque of Queens was written for aristocrats, to be performed at court, entertaining its audience with poetry, drama, music, and dance. Jonson was Shakespeare's contemporary and friend; his tragedy Sejanus was produced by Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Globe in 1603. Jonson wrote the famous preface to the First Folio.
William Scott's "The Modell of Poesy" (1598-1600). This "Elizabethan treatise on verse" is extremely important to the study of Shakespeare because it is one of the very few surviving documents from the Elizabethan era that describes and discusses Shakespeare's work. Scott was like a literary critic. Scott had first-hand experience with Shakespeare and his work; he read and viewed Shakespeare's work and then commented on them in this official document that reviewed the literature of his time. Scott calls Shakespeare's Richard II "a very well-pend tragedy." He writes, "Sometyme the person shall be so plunged into the passion of sorrowe that he will even forgett his sorrow & seems to entertaine his--hardest fortune with dalliance & sporte, as in teh very well-pend tragedy of Rich.the.2d. is expressed in the King & Queene whilst they play the wantons with their woes." Scott also refers to Shakespeare's poem "The Rape of Lucrece." Scott's treatise is important because it tells us what people thought of Shakespeare during his lifetime.

Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Richard the Third (1597). This version is the first publication of the play. It is open to Richard's last words: "A horse, a horse, my kingdome for a horse."

Shake-speares Sonnets. Never before Imprinted London 1609. This edition of Shakespeare's sonnets was opened to sonnets 114, 115, 119, and 117. The poems appear in this order, not sequentially.

The British Library's copy of the First Folio, opened to Jonson's dedication.

A sketch and plan of New Place, Stratford (1737). New Place is the name of the house in Stratford that Shakespeare purchased in 1597 after earning fame and fortune as a playwright and actor in London. He and his family lived in New Place for several years until Shakespeare's death. Years after Shakespeare's death, New Place was completely remodeled in 1702. A man named George Vertue (1684-1756) saw the house in 1737, and he made a sketch of it, recalling its three stories, five gables, barns, orchards, and gardens. The remodeled New Place was completely demolished in 1759. This sketch is one of the few documents that helps us guess what Shakespeare's last home may have looked like.

Then, finally, the most splendid of all, the Blackfriars Mortgage-Deed, dated 11 March 1613, bearing the signature Wm. Shakspe.

In a related display on Tudor England is a letter written by Queen Elizabeth I in which she refuses to name a successor and promises to consider marrying, if her court can find a suitable suitor.