Without betraying too much of my nerdiness, I thought I might point out a fun little detail from the John Adams miniseries now showing on HBO. From the book American Shakespearean Criticism, reprinted in our reader:
"A number of the leaders of the Revolution owned copies of Shakespeare. ... At least three signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, Francis Hopkinson, and John Penn, owned copies." (Westfall 38)
A quick google search turned up John Adams' personal library catalogued online at johnadamslibrary.org, which is actually a pretty neat site. Sure enough, Adams owned two separate printings of Shakespeare's complete works, one from 1748 and the other printed in 1761, which contains "the author's life; a glossary; and copious indexes."
All of which leads one to believe that the people who worked on this HBO production, especially the set designers, did their homework (via David McCullough) when they chose to hang the framed Droeshout engraving of the bard from the frontispiece of the First Folio on a wall in the Adams home in Boston.
It's hard to spot; I had to rewind to make sure I wasn't seeing things. But he was there! Hanging on the wall before someone slammed the door, walked out, or something similar. Now whether Adams actually owned a copy of the engraving is more of a stretch, but I was pleased by the inclusion of such a tiny detail, anyway.
The image in question:
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