A level English Literature: Special 400th Anniversary First Folio Talk

Year 13 English Literature students attended a public lecture by Professor Judith Buchanan to celebrate the 400^th Anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio.  Professor Buchanan is not only the Master of St Peter’s College Oxford and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, but she is a leading authority on the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, a work which is still one of the most important secular works ever to be published.

Professor Buchanan discussed what this hugely influential volume has offered to the world and included revealing points of comparison with previously published, single-work editions of Shakespeare’s plays and some histories of loss, sale, theft, and recovery that individual copies of the 1623 Folio have accrued in their passage down the centuries.  There was also an opportunity to participate in a reading of ‘Henry V’ to compare the ways in which the versions of the plays have differed in performance and publication and Matt Smith represented PHHS by performing part of the prologue to this play. At the end of the lecture our students had the opportunity to meet with Professor Buchanan to ask questions and talk about her lecture.