First Folio Summer breeze…

…makes me feel fine, flowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.

Ok enough, enough with the Ron Rosenbaum enthusiasm. I spent yesterday cruising the web for reviews of his Shakespeare Wars. (I hear cries of ‘get a life’)

The reason being I’m having trouble finishing his book, despite repeated attempts to do so. I love the premise. What are the major clashes in present day Sh. scholarship?

Intrepid Reporter Ron seems to have solipsistic issues, but then so do i. Personally I laughed my cynical ass off at the Don Foster SHAXICON chapter, as did he I’m sure. ‘I am Ron Rosenbaum, know ye not that!’

For those in-non-a-cognoscenti that don’t follow such things. Don Foster attributed the worst poem ever to SHakespeare, A Funeral Elegy.

Don had a database, SHAXICON (SEXY ONE). Don knows ‘Computers are smarter than people because they have no feelings or sensibilities. Just the facts ma’am’.

Ron, myself and many ‘old school’ scholars believe our subjectivity is inherent in our recognizing SHakespeare when we read it. Don’t ask me how, we just do. Go and do the Golden Ear test in the sidebar.

In fact Ron spends most of his book trying to answer the question: ‘how do I know what is Shakespearean?’ And not some copyist scribe or printer’s apprentice, or John Ford (not he of the Western fame) or horror of horrors, Teddy Oxenforde. Anyway Ron was right and it turned out ’twas the former Ford that penned the elegy.

Mr Foster went to Gloucester and had to swallow all his big mouthed threats and gloats, which i remember him kinda not doing on the Shaksper discussion list. Humble pie doesn’t seem to be Mr Foster’s piece of cake. But the adage holds true, he who larfs last…

So Ron’s book deals with issues out there in post-modern Shakey-land. Things like: Pausing at the end of a verse line, dry-humping Gertrude’s leg, bashing Bloom and deifying Booth and Brook, the ‘revised’ last lines in 2 Lears and 3 Hamlets, scandalous! (I’m still hearing the cries of ‘get a life’).

But every self-respecting SHake-spherean has his own take on this all and more. Although the scholars Ron deals with are no slighties in the Scholarly firmament, my scholar heroes are people like Brian Vickers, Alan Nelson, MacDonald P. Jackson, and Anthony James West. This latter brings us to today’s post title.

It started with the Google alert to a new book named the Book of William by Paul Collins. And it’s about the history of THE First Folio. Now back in 1998-9 at the Shakespeare Institute I bemoaned the dearth of literature on said book. Plus the fact that there was little in the way of a modern census.

Enter Antony James West. This is scholarship I love, almost as much as using a colon: getting a grip on one thing and not letting go until it or you is exhausted in every sense.

Now Paul Collins, who gets big ups from his homies here at Philobiblos. and Library Thing, which linked to Jeremy’s blog, is potentially my new BFF.

Paul teaches at Portland State University and writes for SLATE , which i obviously don’t read regularly, where he covers AJW’s quest to document the Folios. More importantly a sidebar First Folio permalink is happening from dwelling on this all.

Press here for Japanese scholarship and ownership of First Folios. BTW there still exists an unbroken theatrical tradition in Japan dating from the time of SHakespeare. Damn Cromwell!

But now a book, with that for me solipsistic title, therefore a must have on my bookshelf. Besides, at 25 US dollars for a 256 page HARD Cover SIGNED copy available here at Powell’s this is a bargain. And which of us doesn’t have a piston engine or two tucked away in our closets, hmmm?

Excited little Shakespeare bunny who can’t wait to get this one. My birthday money from Moms and Pops well spent.

Next posting we’ll travel back several weeks to when I devoured Clinton Heylin’s ‘so long as men can breathe’. Now my fellow Rock and Roll swindlers we started with music we’ll end with it too. Just sing, “this is not re-view” to the tune of This is not a love song!

BTW I’ve got a life.