The town of Saint-Omer in northern France (current population 15,700) is back on the map. Of course it was never really completely off the map. But to whom it belonged was the subject of a long series of struggles, and from the late 10th century it was passed back and forth between France and the Low Countries several times, and was besieged, plundered and looted over and over again. Internally, disputes also raged, in this case between two rival monasteries, Saint-Bertin and Notre Dame, for 900 years.
The newly-discovered Omer First Folio bears the name ‘Nevill,’ a Catholic family name with a rich pedigree in the highly-charged religio-polical world of the 16th and early-17th centuries. It was the Nevilles (along with the Percys) who had been at the center of the Revolt of the Northern Earls in 1569, which aimed to depose the Protestant Elizabeth and to replace her with the Catholic Mary. The revolt ended in disaster, and members of the Neville family fled into exile abroad. Like Shakespeare, the Nevilles had Warwickshire roots, and Warwickshire was known to be a hotbed of Catholic sedition. An Edmund Neville (1605-1647) is known to have been educated at the College. And members of the Scarisbrick family also adopted the alias 'Neville;' Edmund Scarisbrick (1639-1708) was also a student at Saint Omer.
the abbey of St Bertin
A few events have left a lasting impression on the historical record. The Jesuit Robert Persons founded a College in Saint-Omer 1593, which had as its mission the education of refugee Catholics after the English penal laws were put into place. And it was from Saint-Omer that Henry VIII imported an expert swordsman to insure that the execution of Anne Boleyn would go smoothly.
But things have been relatively quiet in Saint-Omer for the past 200 years or so; that is, until last Saturday. Last Saturday, Eric Rasmussen was in Saint-Omer to verify that a book found in the town library (the Bibliothèque Municipale) was indeed one of the few original First Folio editions of the works of Shakespeare (Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, 1623).
Rasmussen’s qualifications for this task are impeccable: professor and chair of the department of English at the University of Nevada, author (with Anthony James West) of The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), developer of the Internet Shakespeare Project and editor of the RSC Complete Works of Shakespeare series. No wonder it took him less than 5 minutes to determine the authenticity of the book!
The Saint-Omer First Folio was found by the Library staff during a hunt for volumes to be included in an upcoming exhibition of English-language books. It had been catalogued as an 18th century edition of Shakespeare works,”and it was just sitting on a shelf alongside other books by English authors,” the library’s Rare Books librarian Rémy Cordonnier said. The town library retains some of the books originally held by the Abbey of St Bertain, but this is likely from the library of the College of St Omer. The Bibliothèque Municipale also has one of the 48 surviving copies of the Gutenberg Bible, although its copy is incomplete. (Were these deemed not worth moving when the College relocated to England in 1794?)
The newly-discovered Omer First Folio bears the name ‘Nevill,’ a Catholic family name with a rich pedigree in the highly-charged religio-polical world of the 16th and early-17th centuries. It was the Nevilles (along with the Percys) who had been at the center of the Revolt of the Northern Earls in 1569, which aimed to depose the Protestant Elizabeth and to replace her with the Catholic Mary. The revolt ended in disaster, and members of the Neville family fled into exile abroad. Like Shakespeare, the Nevilles had Warwickshire roots, and Warwickshire was known to be a hotbed of Catholic sedition. An Edmund Neville (1605-1647) is known to have been educated at the College. And members of the Scarisbrick family also adopted the alias 'Neville;' Edmund Scarisbrick (1639-1708) was also a student at Saint Omer.
One wonders what the network of spies in Elizabeth’s court, who were always looking for signs of religious treachery and who make the TSA look like rank amateurs, would have made of this First Folio in the collection of renegade Catholic institution? Would Will Shakespeare have had to answer some probing questions?
"Jean-Christophe Mayer, a Shakespeare expert at the University of Montpellier III, France, cautioned against making too strong a connection, but noted that a library in the northern French town of Douai also owned some early transcripts of Shakespeare’s plays. 'It’s interesting that the plays were on the syllabuses at these colleges,' he said. The new folio, he added, “could be part of the puzzle of Shakespeare’s place in Catholic culture.'” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/arts/shakespeare-folio-discovered-in-france-.html?_r=0
We await with interest the further insights of the serious Shakespeare scholars, but in the meantime we rejoice at this remarkable discovery. Check your attics, everyone!
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