Folger Library teaches volumes

Media Credit: Courtesy of FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY SHORE THING - Edward IV's mistress, Jane Shore, was portrayed alternately as promiscuous and virtuous after her death in 1527. Here, Shore is shown at her best. The exhibit also features a watercolor by the same artist in which she is seen topless.

With the presidential election campaign well underway, Americans are no strangers to spin. Today, the Folger Shakespeare Library opens "History in the Making: How Early Modern Britain Imagined its Past," which shows through books, art and other artifacts how the British rewrote their political and religious history to win over the public in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The exhibit is located down a long, dark wood-paneled corridor designed in Tudor style. Visitors can walk through the exhibit or use the cell phone audio tour guide. The cell phone audio tour is free, except the use of your minutes (great for people with unlimited or free weekend minutes). It's simple to use: Just dial the number and follow the prompts.

The exhibit concentrates on the British split from the Catholic Church. There are manuscripts of old English documents chronicling the time when Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church of Rome in the 1530s and established himself as head of the Protestant Church of England.

Next to case four is John Foxe's "Actes and Monuments," also called "Book of Martyrs." It stands alone because of its significance to British religious history. The thick book looks larger than one volume of the complete Oxford English Dictionary, with beautifully tarnished pages and text in undecipherable old English.

"Book of Martyrs" is evidence of the tribulations of the true English Church. The thick book was used as a symbol proving English Protestant religion stronger than the Catholic Church. In fact, in 1570, the book was ordered to be in every church in the country.

The two most risqué historical topics in the exhibit are a royal mistress and an execution. Jane Shore was Edward IV's mistress during the 16th century.

Shore was part of a political campaign to vilify the York regime. Amy Arden, communications associate at Folger Library, calls Jane Shore's story "a smear campaign." The glass case contains three documents that chronicle her relationship with Edward IV. Shore herself was married, and it is believed after the death of her husband she remarried.

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