From the Folger
The Folger is—among other things—a community of scholars. Most of them come from their home campuses to take up residence at the library in order to pursue archival research of a kind possible only at a rare-book library. In addition to five long-term fellows, who come for the academic year on grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we have about 30 short-term fellows, who come for one to three months and are supported here by fellowships drawn from our own endowments.
Together, these scholars form an ever-changing but deeply collegial group, and their research almost always is energized and sometimes even is transformed by their contacts with one another. Before I became director in 2002, I had been a fellow at the library twice—in 1988-89 and again in 2001-02. On both occasions, I needed extended research time to complete book projects—one titled The Body Embarrassed, which was published in 1993, and the other titled Humoring the Body: Emotions on the Shakespearean Stage, published late in 2004. Equipped with a carrel and a networked computer, surrounded by books, sheltered by the quiet of the library and assisted by the remarkable reading-room staff, I had some of the most deeply satisfying and productive moments of a scholarly career. When the fellowships were over, I went back to my then-life as an English professor, filled with renewed enthusiasm for teaching and many new ideas about the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries to impart to my undergraduates.
All of us at the Folger are delighted that Anston Bosman, assistant professor of English at Amherst College, has been in residence this year as a Mellon Long-Term Fellow working on a book titled Intertheater in Renaissance Europe: Traveling Scripts, Players, Cultures. Our delight springs not only from Anston himself—he is a lively, energetic and brilliant member of the library community—but also from the fact that his presence strengthens the ties between the Folger and the college. His fellowship application convinced the external review committee that no one had yet studied the English acting companies—Shakespeare's ntemporaries—that toured regularly in Europe. Performing in English before audiences in Holland, France and Germany, how did these actors communicate the meaning of action? How were they received by their audiences? Who were their audiences? Such a project requires not only command of several European languages (which Anston has), but also hours of research in a number of libraries other than the Folger. The project represents a new kind of theater history, since Anston must use the documentary record in a speculative way: to flesh out past performances now only dimly visible to us and tell us new things about theatrical crosscurrents in northern Europe.
Anston's project is typical in one sense: While focused on Europe from 1500 to 1700, it involves Shakespeare only tangentially. Other fellows this year are doing research into the history of belief in ghosts and apparitions, early modern travel writing, natural history, Paul Robeson's portrayal of Othello, Lutheranism in England, Elizabethan garden books, Elizabethan dreams, ideas of music in Renaissance emblem books. While we will always be a home to Shakespeare scholars—indeed a requisite destination for anyone doing work in Shakespeare—our collection is important for doing research in a variety of academic disciplines.
—Gail Kern Paste
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