‘As big as Taylor Swift for 400 years’: Sydney prepares for Shakespeare fans

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Move over, Sydney. There’s a horde of tourists coming. And they’re lining up to turn pages of a book by a dead white bloke who could put Taylor Swift to shame in terms of name recognition, crazy fans, imitators and merch.

Shall we compare Tay Tay’s fame to William Shakespeare’s acclaim? Yes, we can, says rare book expert Maggie Patton, the curator of the State Library of NSW’s new exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio.

Rare books expert at the State Library of NSW Maggie Patton with Shakespeare’s First Folio.Credit: Steven Siewert

“Shakespeare’s been as big as Taylor Swift for 400 years,” Patton said.

Opening on Saturday, For All Time, Shakespeare in Print will feature a range of events, including special page turnings of the early Folios, and a number of talks, the first by Bell Shakespeare theatre company founder John Bell and actor Kate Mulvany.

The First Folio – credited for preserving works such as Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet – is a rare bound collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays. It was published in 1623, eight years after the playwright’s death.

Shakespeare fans will travel around the world to view the 235 remaining copies of the First Folio as institutions display these rare and valuable books to mark the anniversary.

10 Shakespearean phrases we use every day

Source: The Bell Shakespeare 

The State Library, located at 1 Shakespeare Place, is the only library in Australia to hold a First Folio and the complete set of the Shakespeare’s First, Second, Third and Fourth Folios. Each edition is different.

NSW State Librarian Dr John Vallance said 18 of the 36 plays in the First Folio had not been recorded in print before 1623. Without the First Folio, plays like As You Like It, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew would have been lost to history.

According to Folio400, a global website dedicated to the 400th anniversary, about 750 copies of the First Folio were printed by Shakespeare’s friends and actors in his plays.

A “pristine” version sold about a decade ago for $10 million, and many, such as NSW’s, were donated by wealthy benefactors. Some institutions, such as the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, were built to house these folios.

Folio400 was established by Marcus Coles, a former businessman, who told The Guardian that he developed an “obsession” with the First Folio after a chance visit to the Globe Theatre in London. Its bound collections of Shakespeare’s work were “the closest we can get to his original writing”, he said.

In Australia, the cult of Shakespeare took off early, and it nearly led to Canberra being named Shakespeare. The first record of a Shakespeare play being performed in NSW was in 1800.

Patton, a fan of Swift and Shakespeare, said they shared many qualities. “Just like Tay Tay, [Shakespeare] had fantastic content,” she said. “He could be performed, and replayed and re-edited and reinterpreted and people remembered the lines. Just like a line by Taylor Swift.”

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was the basis for Swift’s 2008 song Love Story. She sings that Romeo is “throwin’ pebbles” and “my daddy said, ‘Stay away from Juliet’ “.

For every Swiftie who can remember the moment they first listened to Love Story, there is a Shakey who remembers the exact moment they saw Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 interpretation, or Bell Shakespeare’s production now running at the Neilson Nutshell theatre in Sydney’s Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay.

Patton can remember sobbing after a school screening of Zeffirelli’s film. She said as soon as Shakespeare’s First Folio was published, his plays became more popular. “You had important actors performing Shakespeare, doing ‘covers’ of them; there were new editions, extravagant performances of it. People were writing music and creating Shakespeare mementoes and statues.”

The exhibition includes a range of rare books, and works inspired by the bard. These include William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, a Romeo and Juliet inspired tunnel book by Italian artist Daniele Catalli, and a one-of-a-kind artist’s book Shakespeare in the Forest by Jennifer Gibney.

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