The following is a guest post by Music Reference Specialist and Shakespeare scholar, Dr. Stacey Jocoy.
In June 2024, the Folger Shakespeare Library celebrated its reopening after a multi-year building renovation. This amazing repository of everything Shakespeareana is internationally famous for holding the most copies and versions of Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623). Only 235 First Folios survive, and the Folger Shakespeare Library owns 82 of them, which are now on permanent display. The Folger neighbors the Adams Building of the Library of Congress and has a long history of research, collaboration, and performance in all areas that touch Shakespeare, from early-modern literary studies, dramaturgy, source studies, dance and, of course, music. The Folger’s music collections cover the range of changing performativities from early-modern musical offerings that might have been heard in the earliest productions to 20th- and 21st-century musics, composed for or inspired by Shakespeare. Early prints such as “Deuteromelia” (1609) by Thomas Ravenscroft and manuscripts of musical clubs from the seventeenth century such as John Hilton’s catches (V.a.409) convey the interconnectedness of music with early theater. This richness is often explored by The Folger Consort who regularly perform and promote earlier music to explore Shakespearean soundscapes. Compositions from later periods, up to the present in their collections include Franz Schubert’s music for “Cymbeline” and the works of composers such as Julia Marlowe, Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, and Roger Quilter.
The collections of the Music Division of the Library of Congress complement those at the Folger and offer a fruitful counterpoint for both scholars and enthusiasts. The music from the time of Shakespeare, including early-modern prints of ballads and contemporary compositions assist both academics and modern creatives in the reconceptualization of Shakespeare’s world. Collections such as “Pammelia” (1609) and “Catch that Catch Can” (1652) provide convivial period music, like the catch in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (II, iii) and connect to Folger’s edition of “Deuteromelia.”
Later seventeenth-century composers such as Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell composed music for Shakespearean revivals and retellings including “Macbeth” (c. 1665) and “The Fairy Queen” (1693). Additionally, a unique eighteenth-century manuscript, “A Collection of Uncommon and Rare pieces of Shakespeare Music,” offers insight into the early collecting of Shakespeare-related songs, including those composed by Restoration composers such as Purcell, Maurice Greene, and Theodore Aylward for Shakespearean revivals.
The wealth of music related to Shakespeare, however, was composed from the mid-nineteenth century forward and this is where the Music Division’s collections truly shine. From the holograph manuscript editions of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story,” Ambroise Thomas’ opera, “Hamlet” (1868) and Samuel Barber’s music for Franco Zeffirelli’s vision of “Anthony and Cleopatra,” 1966, to first editions of Charles Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” (1867), Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff” (1893), Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Sir John in Love” (1930) and Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1960), musically-staged settings of Shakespeare responded to the popularity and growing canonic status of his works. Songs with Shakespearean lyrics are even more plentiful in collections by composers such as: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Gerald Finzi, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Mary Howe.
The character Hamlet laments in III.2: “You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery.” Shakespeare’s texts provide an ongoing mystery and a musical fascination that has continued to inspire composers from Shakespeare’s time to present.
For more information about early music, including from the time of Shakespeare, see the recent Finding Aid created by Susan Clermont that lists many of the early holdings of this collection.