Shakespeare Examined Through Performance
Preface
"Shakespeare Examined Through Performance," a pedagogical institute directed by Professors Alan C. Dessen and Audrey Stanley and held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 199596, was funded by the Education Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities. At this moment, it seems particularly important to acknowledge the support without which this remarkable program would not have been possible.
The Folger Institute, the division of the Folger Library which sponsors advanced programs in the humanities, is in fact a collaborative venture between the Library and thirtythree colleges and universities. Each member institution provides financial support, in the form of an annual fee, and intellectual guidance, through its faculty representative to the Institute's governing board. These universities are largely located on the eastern seaboard (with a concentration in the midAtlantic area), giving the Folger Institute a strong regional base. Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities makes programs developed by the Folger Institute available to a larger, national audience of college and university professors.
The Folger Institute has a strong history of sponsoring the Endowment's traditional six and sevenweek summer humanities institutes. When in 1991 the Folger approached the Endowment about organizing a program of comparable intensity but with a radically different, academicyear, schedule, it was N.E.H. officer Barbara Ashbrook who was sufficiently visionary to encourage us to break out of the box of the usual format. As always, she read the grant proposal carefully in draft, offered advice that immeasurably improved it, shepherded the completed proposal through the application process at the Endowment, and then monitored the unfolding project. But even these contributions to the program, vital as they are, must not overshadow the importance of that largeness of spirit with whichfrom the very firstshe approached a program that didn't fit the usual mold.
The result of the 1991 proposal was a 199293 institute on "Shakespeare and the Languages of Performance," directed by Professor Lois Potter. A group of seventeen college teachers of Shakespeare travelled to Washington for one intensive weekend each month during the ninemonth academic year. The format was sufficiently successful and the outcome for pedagogical enterprise so distinguished that the innovative schedule was adopted again in 199596, with "Shakespeare Examined Through Performance."
So many ingredients are necessary for a program like this to flourish. Directors Alan Dessen and Audrey Stanley were able to focus their vast learning and experience on the particular issues and challenges of this project, and to do so with an infectious zest, with conviction, and with a nurturing respect for each participantteacher. The collective knowledge, commitment, resourcefulness, and generosity of the members made for a groupdynamic of unusual energy and accomplishment. The administration and staff of the Folger Libraryespecially the Reading Room staff, the Office of Special Events, the guard staff, and the housekeeping and custodial staffsprovided support of such skill and grace that it seemed invisible.
But without funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities none of these talented individuals would have shared this occasion for advancing the state of teaching at the college and university level. The reach of these N.E.H. funds is incalculable. As was the case with "Shakespeare and the Languages of Performance," each teacher who took part in the institute on "Shakespeare Examined Through Performance" will practice new methods and share new understandings with a full complement of American undergraduates. Each will also spread the word with colleagues not only on the home campus but also at professional conventions. And, to further widen the circle, each has contributed to the manual which follows. The investment of the National Endowment for the Humanities is small for such a return, but it is an investment without which this form of national dialogue about college teaching cannot go forward.
Lena Cowen Orlin
The Folger Institute