Members of the Globe Exhibition staff pick their favourite exhibit or object from the Globe Exhibition.
Kaja Franck has picked The Printing Press as her favourite object in the Globe Exhibition.
My chosen object is the printing press. This press is a full-size recreation of a 17th-century printing press and symbolises how the Shakespeare’s plays went from stage to page. It uses moveable type, similar to that used on the Gutenberg Press, in order to create the pages to be printed. You can find the printing press on the lower-level of the exhibition just past the sound booths. We have regular printing press demonstrations when you can see the press in action.
As a literature student, the printing press is very important to me because it represents the heritage of my subject. It’s wonderful to be able to step into the role of an early print maker and understand the method behind the creation of many texts that I love. The effort that went into creating the First Folio (1623) reminds me of my privilege in creating documents with the help of a computer.
My favourite
part of the demonstration is when I show how the pieces of type were used. I
tell the audience that the type was taken from a case which was split into
upper and lower case and placed into the composing stick. Immediately, the
audience realise that this is where we get the term lower and upper case
letters which is still used today. I also like to discuss the scene in Midsummer
Night’s Dream (believed to be written in 1595) when, during the rehearsal
for Pyramus and Thisbe, Peter Quince the carpenter admonishes Francis
Flute who is performing the part of Thisbe for speaking all his lines at once,
cues and all. This refers to the fact
that during the time that Shakespeare was writing it was traditional to give
the actors only their parts and their cues rather than the entire play. The
reason for this was, in part, to prevent unscrupulous actors from selling the
play to other theatre companies and print houses.
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