Uncover the truth of Shakespeare’s First Folio with Great Performances
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Aimee Bealer
Celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, which saved 18 plays from being lost. Tracing the First Folio’s story, the film also spotlights how the New York City’s Public Theater presents Shakespeare’s work for today’s audiences.
With only half of Shakespeare’s plays published before his death, often in inaccurate and incomplete versions, the First Folio is the first published collection of William Shakespeare’s full plays. Produced seven years after Shakespeare’s death, it preserved the other half of the Bard’s works including beloved plays like “The Tempest,” “Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night” and “Macbeth” which would have otherwise been lost to time. As Professor Jonathan Bate explains: “The First Folio is the most important secular book in the history of the Western World.”
Making Shakespeare: The First Folio tells the story of Shakespeare’s fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell’s enterprise to create the book including the struggle to secure the finance, their difficulty tracing the scripts, the dilemma of choosing between versions of the published plays available, and the challenge of printing the 900-page volume with all the complexities and inadequacies of 17th century printing techniques.
Featuring numerous museums and universities, Great Performances – Making Shakespeare: The First Folio spotlights the work of the Public Theater in New York City, including their bilingual musical version of “Comedy of Errors” that tours New York’s diverse neighborhoods. The film additionally spotlights 11-year-old students from the Bronx who make their own sense of the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet,” and also goes behind the scenes of Kenny Leon’s Shakespeare in the Park production of “Hamlet,” set in Atlanta, Georgia that uncovers a Shakespeare who challenges racism and violence in America today.
Watch Great Performances Friday, November 17 at 9pm on WITF TV and the PBS or WITF app!
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