Tiffany Stern, a leading international expert on English Renaissance theater, will hold a lecture on May 25, 2023, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the first edition of the collected works of William Shakespeare, which was published by his fellow actors in London in 1623, after the author’s death. Stern will present one of the most valuable dramatic works from the perspective of those who first brought it to life on stage. The leading Croatian Shakespeare scholar, Professor Ivan Lupić, Ph.D., will give the opening speech.
THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2023
6 PM (18.00)
Foyer of the Croatian National Theater ”Ivan pl. Zajc”
Verdijeva bb, Rijeka
Abstract
The First Folio (1623) is a collection of plays written by an actor – Shakespeare – and put together by two others, John Heminges and Henry Condell. This talk will ransack Folio and other books for actor and performance traces. Using the Folio to explain how actors learned and rehearsed plays, how they handled prop documents, how they utilised gesture, and how they walked – amongst other things – it will argue that performance is as fundamental to the First Folio as text.
A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare
Biography
Tiffany Stern, FBA, is a Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, having previously been a Professor of Early Modern Drama at the University of Oxford. She specializes in sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century drama, Shakespeare, theatre history, book history, and editing. She has published 12 books and editions, including Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (2000), Making Shakespeare (2004), Shakespeare in Parts (with Simon Palfrey, 2007; winner of the David Bevington Prize), Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (2009; winner of the David Bevington Prize); and Shakespeare, Malone and the Problems of Chronology (2023). General editor of three flagship series, New Mermaids Plays, the Norton Anthology of English Literature (16th Century), and Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series, her current projects are a book on theatre and fairs, a book on early modern product placement, and an Arden Fourth Series edition of The Tempest. In recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2019.