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We’ve heard a lot lately about what Shakespeare would do. He’d be kind to migrants, for instance, because of this passage from the unpublished collaborative play ‘Sir Thomas More’ often attributed to him: 'Imagine that you see the wretched stranger / Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage / Plodding to th’ports and coasts for transportation (Scene 6: 84-6).

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The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 - known as the First Folio - has a rich history. It is estimated that around 700 or 750 copies were printed, and today we know the whereabouts of over 230. They exist in some form or another, often incomplete or a combination of different copies melded together, in libraries and personal collections all over the world.

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How does one preserve the ephemera of the digital world? In a movement as large as the Arab Spring, with a huge digital imprint that chronicled everything from a government overthrow to the quiet boredom of waiting between events, archivists are faced with the question of how to preserve history. The Internet may seem to provide us with the curse of perfect recall, but the truth is it's far from perfect -- and perhaps there's value in forgetting.

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News that a previously unknown copy of the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays has been discovered in a French library has been excitedly picked up by the worldwide press. But apart from the treasure-hunt appeal of this story, does it really matter that instead of the 232 copies of this book listed by Eric Rasmussen and Anthony West in their The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), there are now, apparently, 233? A book that was never particularly rare is now just a little bit less rare. Whoop dee doo. It’s not quite the discovery of – say – a new copy of the first edition of Venus and Adonis or Hamlet, each of which exists in only a single complete copy, still less the discovery of the lost ‘Cardenio’ or ‘Love’s Labour’s Won’: plays attributed to Shakespeare in the early modern period that have not survived. So (how) does it matter?

An easy answer is that every copy of an early modern book is unique. Around 500 press variants in copies of the First Folio have been identified, attesting to processes of proof-reading and stop-press correction in the printing shop of William and Isaac Jaggard at the Barbican where the book was produced. The St Omer copy may well have a different arrangement of corrected and uncorrected sheets than any other extant Folio. Some copies even include proof-sheets marked up with corrections: this one might provide another example. A full bibliographic description of the new find might also add to our understanding of, for example, the late inclusion of Troilus and Cressida in the First Folio, apparently because of problems about securing the rights to publish it. A couple of extant copies show the difficulties in placing this belated play, with cancelled sheets showing how the order of the plays had to be rethought: a new copy might shine new light on this bibliographic puzzle.

Perhaps more immediately arresting about the new copy, though, is how it might develop our understanding of how the travels of the First Folio established and extended Shakespeare’s reputation and reach. Most copies of the First Folio show signs of use: the book that libraries now treat almost as a religious relic was once part of the everyday mess and activity of the household: a book for use rather than ornament. Seeing how this copy can testify to those forms of early use will add to the knowledge of how Shakespeare was consumed in the first century of the book’s life, before cheaper, more convenient reprints of the plays, beginning with Nicholas Rowe in 1709, replaced it as a standard reading edition.

The specific provenance of this new copy is tantalizing. Few details have emerged, but they immediately set off some very suggestive lines of inquiry. The St Omer librarians indicate that Henry IV is marked with some kind of early performance notes. If this is true, then it is a rare – although not unique – example of a copy that can be related to early theatrical performance in some way.

They also suggest it has the name ‘Nevill’ written in it, and speculate that this person may have been one of the students at the Jesuit college in St Omer which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was an important training institution for English Catholics. In fact it might be possible to push a bit further with this identification: members of the prominent Jesuit family the Scarisbricks, from Ormskirk in Lancashire, took the name Neville. Edward Scarisbrick, born in 1639, was educated and later stationed at Saint-Omer. Perhaps he, or another member of his family, made his mark in their copy of Shakespeare. On his return to England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, he also wrote his name in another copy of the First Folio now in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. Other Jesuit associations can also be traced. There’s a First Folio in Stonyhurst College – the English descendant of St Omer’s college. The English college at Valladolid had a copy of the 1632 edition of Shakespeare, heavily censored. The seedy nuns-and-friar comedy Measure for Measure was obviously beyond redemption, and has been torn in its entirety from the volume (that book is now also at the Folger). We don’t yet know if there is any censorship evident in the Saint Omer text.

So Folio 233 potentially has lots to tell us about the spread of Shakespeare in the seventeenth century, about his early readers and about the intellectual and religious contexts and predispositions they brought to their reading. The book itself may not be rare, but its specific journey since its publication – still to be explored – is what makes it unique.

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A number of historians of Mormon history have tried to explain the rationale and motivation behind Joseph Smith’s teachings about “plural marriage.” Although it’s not unreasonable to assume a sexual motivation, Smith’s primary motivation may have been his expansive theology–a theology, in this specific case, that his wife would not accept.

After establishing his new church in 1830 and while continuing to study the Bible, Smith’s far-reaching religious vision to restore “all things” from previous ages made him open to reinstating Old Testament polygamy, explains historian Richard Van Wagoner. Perhaps the timing was right: Americans had won the Revolutionary War and were open to “the surprising and unusual in religious life, according to historian Merina Smith, and in the early 1840s, a core group of Joseph Smith’s believers accepted his developing “exaltation narrative” that included “new family forms.” Joseph Smith biographer Richard Bushman explains that Joseph Smith began to imagine “ecclesiastical and family kingdoms that would persist into eternity.” University of Richmond professor Terryl Givens explains that Smith sought to establish a “timeless and borderless web of human relationships” among his followers, just as the great appeal of first-generation Christianity in the ancient world was “the feeling of entering into an extended family community.” For Joseph Smith, marriage “sealings” joined people, and he was even sealed to some married men and women.

Although there’s evidence that Joseph Smith seemed most interested in creating an interconnected web of believers that could be exalted together, Bushman says Smith  “never wrote his personal feelings about plural marriage” and, according to historian John G. Turner, “whether [he] was motivated by religious obedience or pursued sexual dalliances clothed with divine sanction cannot be fully resolved through historical analysis.” We don’t know to what extent Joseph Smith pursued sexual relations with his wives, and according to Bushman, although “nothing indicates that sexual relations were left out of plural marriage, not until many years later did anyone claim Joseph Smith’s paternity, and evidence for the tiny handful of supposed children is tenuous.” But his wife Emma’s negative reaction to his additional marriages may indicate that she, at least, felt his ideas, if not his actions, went too far.

In the early 1840s as Smith secretly began marrying additional wives and encouraging his closest confidantes to do the same, of course he feared “wrecking his marriage,” as Bushman explains it. During this time, according to Emma Smith’s biographers Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Smith repeatedly tried to explain “plural marriage” to his wife Emma, sometimes taking her alone on long buggy rides to talk to her about it. In May 1843 after much convincing, Emma finally gave her consent to a polygamous marriage and participated in her husband’s marriage to two sisters, giving her “free and full consent.”

Not long afterwards, however, according to Bushman, “Emma began to talk as firmly and urgently to Joseph about abandoning plural marriage as he had formerly talked to her about accepting it.” In the spring of 1843, “the recovery of his domestic life” became “almost impossible.”  As Bushman explains, “They were in impossible positions: Joseph caught between his revelation and his wife, Emma between a practice she detested and belief in her husband.” Evidently fearing the legal and financial ramifications of many wives, Emma requested half ownership of a steam boat and “sixty city lots,” and Joseph evidently agreed “to add no more” wives. If he did, he told friend and secretary William Clayton, Emma “would divorce him.” Under these conditions, Joseph and Emma reconciled. Tragically, in 1844, he was murdered by an angry mob, and Emma deeply mourned his death.

Starting in 1852 in Utah, polygamous marriage was openly encouraged by Smith’s successor Brigham Young, and about 25 to 30% of Mormon men, women, and children lived in polygamous families. In 1876, Smith’s revelation on “celestial marriage”–marriage which endures after death and which could include “plural marriage”–was canonized in a Mormon book of revelations called Doctrine and Covenants. In 1890, Mormons officially gave up polygamy but not the larger belief in celestial marriage. Today Mormon marriages still encompass the essence of Smith’s original theology–celestial, or eternal, marriage–as monogamous couples continue the practice of sacred marriage “sealings” to each other and to their ancestors, fulfilling Smith’s desire to vertically, horizontally, and everlastingly connect Latter-day Saints.

Featured image: Image taken from page 277 of ‘Life in Utah‘ by British Library (1870). Public domain via Flickr.

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