Dear Students and Fellowship Applicants,
I am a collector. My story begins when I was a child.
My father was a photoengraver and typesetter who died when I was very young. Among the things he left me was a single edition of Shakespeare’s works. Being five years old I found the language a bit difficult but my aunt bought a child’s version of the plays for me and from then on I was hooked. I learned as much as I could about these wonderful stories, especially the gory ones.
Over the years I would drop into bookstores and pick up better copies of the plays, gradually building a small library of neatly bound volumes of my favorite plays. Fine. But being a collector, I wanted more. The inevitable day of reckoning came when I spotted an item in a catalog from one of the rare book auction houses. The listing took my breath away: the title page of Macbeth taken from Shakespeare’s First Folio.
I knew enough about the early editions to understand that Macbeth was one of the plays printed in the First Folio and had never been printed before. There on the page were the three “weyard sisters” gathered around a cauldron chanting “Fair is foul and foul is fair.”
I had never in my wildest imaginings thought that one might actually possess such an artifact. I assumed priceless relics such as these were the stock and province of museums and very specialized collections. I had to have it! But then came the ordeal of bidding by phone, a lone voice against a sea of floor bidders. Suffice it to say that after rounds of heroic bidding I emerged victorious. Macbeth was mine. It is now in your hands. And, as any collector will tell you, the real excitement of building a collection lies in the research. All of this brought me to Shakespeare and, I hope, sparks your curiosities too.
It is my fondest hope that this collection will serve as a springboard for UMass Fellows intent on pursuing a career rooted in the appreciation, understanding and exploration of these foundational pillars of our cultural heritage. My collection is in your hands. I hope you will make new discoveries and share your knowledge with others by curating the stories you want to tell. I look forward to seeing what you do!
Best wishes and good luck!
Ron Gillespie