Of Quartos and Folios
Two weeks ago, I attended the 2026 CIMA Annual Conference in Cedar City. We met on the campus of Southern Utah University, in that brief interlude of time between the end of the Spring Semester and the start of the annual Utah Shakespearean Festival. The keynote address at the conference was delivered by Dr. Scott Knowles who discussed the intersection of Shakespearean studies and archival sources. It was fascinating to learn about how much the existing record reveals about how the context Shakespeare created his work in, how likely collaborative the process was, and how much of what we see in performances today has evolved over time through different performances. And as a special bonus, my colleagues in the SUU Sherratt Library Special Collections brought out their original 1685 Fourth Folio and an early quarto for us to geek out on!