Coley, Suzanne. "Shakespeare and the art of bookmaking." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/shakespeare-and-the-art-of-book-making.

Shakespeare and the art of bookmaking

Interpreting Shakespeare’s sonnets through a contemporary lens of bookmaking, embroidery, and printmaking.

Download the transcript
Suzanne Coley
Independent artist

As a book artist specializing in printmaking, poetry, embroidery, and bookbinding, Suzanne Coley reimagines the words of Shakespeare through the medium of book art. Her work brings Shakespeare into the contemporary world and reshapes his texts into culturally and socially significant art objects. In the last 10 years she has made over 500 unique traditional hardback books expanding the traditional bookbinding and book arts practices. Suzanne's art combines painting, poetry, printmaking, and textile manipulation to examine the human condition and modern-day social justice issues.

Further learning

Recommended

Activity

One word essay

This assignment in Kim F. Hall's Shakespeare courses asks students to analyze a single word in early modern texts using a variety of primary sources.

Kim F. Hall
Video

Race in Hamlet: The violent Black man myth

Rather than try to tell a sociological story about the "violent Black man" myth, we can examine one instance of this racial mythmaking in a widely studied, influential literary forebear: Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Ian Smith
Syllabus

Othello and Othello and Othello

Beginning with the play’s earliest performance, we study Othello from various critical perspectives through close analysis of the play-text and adaptations on film and stage. For several weeks students read the text of the play slowly and closely, paying particular attention to Shakespeare’s use of language, metaphor, genre, and dramatic form.

Abdulhamit Arvas