To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the publication of William Shakespeare’s First Folio, a portrait of the playwright and a copy of a speech from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” embarked on a remarkable journey to the edge of space as part of a short film series.
Shakespeare’s First Folio, a collection of his works published on November 8, 1623, seven years after his passing, remains a literary treasure.
Around 750 copies were believed to have been printed, preserving 36 of the 37 plays Shakespeare wrote, organized into comedies, tragedies, and histories for the first time.
Filmmaker Jack Jewers created six short films addressing contemporary themes such as space exploration, the impact of the COVID pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, using Shakespeare’s speeches and poems.
Actor Tom Baker narrated “Lovers and Madmen,” one of the films, in which he sent the portrait and text to the Earth’s upper atmosphere with a weather balloon.
Jewers explained, “A tiny copy of the speech we used, which is ‘The Lovers and Madmen’ speech from ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ (was) inserted into the portrait. I like the idea of Shakespeare’s words floating in space along with his image.”
Another film, “The Stranger’s Case,” combined a speech contributed by Shakespeare to an unperformed play with footage of refugees at sea, highlighting the enduring relevance of the playwright’s themes to contemporary issues.
Jewers noted, “What struck me when I was kind of doing a deep dive into the bits of his work that I wanted to focus on was how the issues he wrote about still felt so contemporary. ‘The Stranger’s Case’ (speech) … feels so modern that whenever anybody hears this, they go ‘well, this could be today’.”
Shakespeare’s First Folio holds a significant place in English literature, as it ensured the preservation of 18 plays, including “Macbeth,” that might otherwise have been lost to time.
Will Tosh, head of research at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London, highlighted its importance, saying, “(Shakespeare’s) fellow actors, theatre company owners, decided to pull that material together and produce the kind of testament to their former colleague, to the greatest playwright that they had certainly ever worked with, and as it turned out, the greatest playwright in the English language.”
