Line Cottegnies et Gisèle Venet, viennent de faire une découverte concernant le First Folio de Shakespeare, lui-même découvert à la bibliothèque de Saint-Omer par Rémy Cordonnier en novembre 2014.

Cet article offre une synthèse des différentes marques et annotations. Il s'intéresse en particulier aux marques de possesseurs, dont les curieuses marques au poinçon PS, qui ponctuent l'ouvrage à intervalles réguliers.

L'article est entièrement consultable sur HalSHS : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01120682/document


Line Cottegnies and Gisèle Venet

Since the discovery by Rémy Cordonnier of a copy of a Shakespeare First Folio last November in the Saint-Omer public library,[1] the scholars’ attention has focussed on the identity of the mysterious Nevill, whose name stares at any reader opening the book. His identification, it is assumed, must help date at least some of the annotations in the volume itself. The book, however, possesses other distinctive marks, possibly marks of ownership, which are perhaps less prominent at first sight. On nine occasions in the volume the letters P and S appear, hand-stamped in ink at the bottom of the page, either both on the same page, or on two consecutive pages. Hand-stamped initials in books are highly unusual. The positioning of the PS marks in the Folio is also odd, although a regular pattern seems to emerge, as we can show. The presence of the letters PS raises many questions. What could have driven anyone to want to mark a book at regular intervals? This short article describes the phenomenon, as well as other annotations in the Folio, and offers some hypotheses to explain the presence of the marks. It will shortly be published in the peer-reviewed electronic journal etudes-episteme.org,

The full text can be accessed at : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01120682.

[1] BASO, inv. 2227.