Women and the Materials of Writing

Abstract

One copy of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio, now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, is marked with the fragmentary testimony of a seventeenth-century woman (see Figure 1.1), about whom little is known, other than her name: margarit by is my name and with my peen I wright this same and if my pee n hade ben better i sholld 1 Margaret By’s broken final line doubly registers the allegedly stuttering presence of her pen: she not only writes about it, but also — by ceasing to write with it — calls the reader’s attention to the presence of the quill in her hand, and to the sometimes vexed relationship that existed between the writer and her tools. An aborted first attempt at the verse, along with one complete and two partial signatures, reinforces the link between literacy and pen-work, composition and inscription. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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