LIMA — Paris Prichard, a first-year student at the Ohio State University at Lima, won a facsimile copy of William Shakespeare’s 1623 first folio. The book, which was published in 1968 by Norton, was donated to the OSU-Lima Campus library by David S. Adams, associate professor emeritus and presented to her during an awards ceremony held Sunday at the Martha W. Farmer Theatre for the Performing Arts.
To win the book, Prichard entered a submission to an essay contest on the topic of “What would I do with a facsimile copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio?”
According to Tina Schneider, professor and librarian at the OSU-Lima campus, Prichard drew inspiration for her essay from Eric Johnson, associate professor and curator of Thompson Special Collections at The Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus.
“Dr. Johnson visited a few weeks ago with rare books and manuscripts and let people handle them, and talked about how important it was to have those materials in the hands of students,” Schneider said.
Following Johnson’s advice, Prichard plans to donate her prize to Spencerville High School.
“I come from a really small community, so there’s a big sentiment for giving back, and I heard that one of my favorite English teachers at Spencerville was teaching a Shakespeare appreciation class next year,” said Prichard. “Last year we studied Shakespeare, and I thought it would be cool for them to be able to look at the facsimile copy as well as promote Shakespeare as a whole when discovering Shakespeare’s plays.”
“I have been a book collector since I was a little kid,” said Adams, who donated the folio to the library, as part of an effort to downsize his lifetime library collection of several hundred books.
During his lifetime, Adams had a chance to see Shakespeare’s plays performed live in England and even performed in Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” at the Martha W. Farmer Theatre for the Performing Arts.
The awards ceremony preceded the concluding performance of ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[Revised],’ which was put on by the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Arts at The Ohio State University at Lima. The performance was directed by Director Margie Anich, who described the fast-paced play as “97 minutes. 37 plays. 3 actors. 2 much fun!”
Playwrights Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield, composed a dramatic reenactment of the most memorable scenes from all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays. The entire performance, completed by three actors playing multiple roles, was a fast run-through of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays.
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