The British Library
What do the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, Leonard da Vinci’s Notebook, Handel’s Messiah, and Shakespeare’s Folio all have in common? I found out today they’re all on display in the British Library in London.
As a graduate in English Literature, I felt justified in dragging April across London to the British Library to see Shakespeare’s originally-published folio (36 play scripts in all). When we got to the library, I found out they have an entire section of old literature, including the original Beowulf, works from Bronte, Yeats, James Joyce, even the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland of all things.
I felt the envy of literature and drama lovers everywhere as I stared through the casing at Shakespeare’s originally-published folio.
Yet at the same time, I heard the words of a question April had asked me the day before, which went something like this:
Why do we feel the need when we’re on vacation to go around and see the same things everyone else is seeing especially when we know the experience is going to be crowded with people and most likely dull in the end anyway?
I think this question came as a result of watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (which at the risk of going on a tangent I’ll just say was a complete waste of time).
I can say this: nothing surprised me about Shakespeare’s folio. The open pages looked just like the photo-copied handout I’d scribbled on in class at Michigan State 4 years ago. I noted the familiar, but odd spellings (particularly the abundance of F’s, many of which would later be substituted with be the modern S) and attempted to read a few lines of text out-loud just for fun.
But in the end, Shakespeare’s folio looked just as it should, and I wondered for a moment if it actually hadn’t been a waste of time to see something I already knew so well if not for the simple fact of being able to say to all my literature and drama-loving friends, “I saw Shakespeare’s folio,” which did seem satisfying, but not worth the afternoon.
Still, as I continued to walk through the library, stopping to wonder at the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, an a number of other texts, the importance of the experience became clear to me.
These experiences were important to me because I was able to have a moment or two alone with each of these texts. It was my own time. My own experience. One on one.
Shakespeare’s folio wasn’t anything new to me, but there was something about having my own moment with the folio, a moment that was my own, which I could do anything I wanted, think what I wanted to think, say what I wanted to say, a moment in time when no one else could say they were with the folio except for me.
So let’s ask the question one more time. What do the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, Leonard da Vinci’s Notebook, Handel’s Messiah, and Shakespeare’s Folio all have in common? They all spent the afternoon (of July 12th, 2004 for the record) with me.
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