Penn English Department celebrates 400 years of Shakespeare

Penn’s English Department will announce the student winner of their Shakespeare Sonnet Contest at an end-of-the-year party in Fisher-Bennett Hall on April 27. 

The prize commemorates the 400th anniversary of the publication of William Shakespeare’s First Folio. 

“This is a very special year in the history of Shakespeare studies,” Becky Friedman, associate director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English, said. 

The First Folio is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after his death in 1623.

With six copies of the First Folio in Philadelphia, including one at Penn, there are many…