Staff report
The Herald-Dispatch
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. ± It’s fitting that the folio that gave us the perfect Halloween line, “double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble,” will be on display at the Huntington Museum of Art through October.
(Herald-Dispatch photo by Ryan Fischer)
William Shakespeare’s First Folio was the first published collection of a group of Shakespeare’s plays, put together by two of his colleagues and friends in 1623, seven years after the author’s death.
The folio contains 36 of Shakespeare’s plays in total, grouped together as comedy, history or tragedy for the first time. Each of the First Folios is slightly different from the next, as each copy was individually printed and mistakes were fixed as the printing occurred.
It is believed that about 750 or fewer copies of the First Folio were originally published, and today only 233 of those survive.
The museum has been the home of The Daywood Collection for 50 years, thanks to the art collection assembled by Arthur Dayton and Ruth Woods Dayton.
The museum had a reception Sunday to welcome the historic piece of literature to the museum, complete with Marshall University theater students presenting scenes from a variety of Shakespeare’s plays and music from the Cabell Midland Collegium Musicum.
HMA’s hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free on Tuesdays courtesy of Macy’s and $5 per adult on other days. For more information on events at HMA, visit www.hmoa.org or call 304-529-2701. HMA is fully accessible.
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