Just a few blocks down from Eastern Market is the Folger Shakespeare Library. Once a year, to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday, the rooms normally restricted to scholars are open to the public. Every year I always plan to go to this, and this time I finally did.
It should be difficult for anyone with religious feelings, or anyone who loves Shakespeare, or especially for anyone who feels religious about Shakespeare to suppress emotion when entering the main reading room. It appropriates the symbolism and iconography of a cathedral, using the Bard himself as its secular object of worship. The walls are inscribed with praises of Shakespeare from the likes of Emerson and Goethe. The largest of its stained-glass windows is an illustration of the "All the World’s a Stage" passage on the seven stages of life. The stages, from left to right, are infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and second childishness.
The adjacent room contains both portraits of Shakespeare, and periodicals on topics related to early modern Europe.
Happy birthday!
Outside, there is a garden of Elizabethan herbs.
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did i ever tell you about the shakespeare garden at vassar? it was lovely, and contained only plants mentioned in his works.
it also happened to be the location of the annual 4/20, um, celebration.
Posted by: nub | May 03, 2007 at 02:29 PM