Walking Shadow by Greg Doran Review: Shakespeare's Healing Power in Grief
After the death of his husband, Antony Sher, the former Royal Shakespeare Company director embarks on an obsessive quest to see every extant copy of Shakespeare's First Folio. This book is really two volumes in one, offering a deeply moving record of one person's confrontation with death and his partner's struggle with survival.
Antony Sher's Dying Diaries: Candour and Resilience
The first part consists of diaries written by Antony Sher in the six months before his death from liver cancer in December 2021. Sher, a renowned actor, artist, and writer, was always a shrewd observer, and what he called The Dying Diaries show a characteristic mix of candour, resilience, and wit. He does not minimise the horror, describing cancer as "a bomb in our household" that explodes unexpectedly. Yet, he confronts it with wry humour, such as when he notes the lesions in his liver are the size of a satsuma and a walnut, musing this could be a good title for his diaries.
Reflecting on his last play, Kunene and the King by John Kani, about an old South African Shakespearean actor dying of liver cancer, Sher adds, "Who says that actors don't take their roles home with them?" Despite the grimness of his final days, the diaries highlight the shared delight between Sher and Doran in wildlife, comedies like Jackie Mason tapes, and their unshakeable love for each other.
Greg Doran's Folio Quest: A Journey Through Grief
The bulk of the book, however, focuses on Greg Doran's need to find a new motive for living after Sher's death. He stepped down as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, left their Stratford home, and was struck by a bold, slightly "crazy" idea. Since 2023 marked the quatercentenary of the First Folio's publication, which preserved half of Shakespeare's plays, Doran decided to track down as many of the over 200 extant copies as possible.
What starts as a journey through Britain expands to North America, Japan, South Africa, and the Antipodes. When asked why he would want to see endless copies of the same book, Doran says it is an attempt to understand Shakespeare's complex legacy, but in truth, he admits it is "a massive piece of displacement activity" to cope with grief.
Stories from the Folio Roadshow
Every copy of the Folio tells a story, and Doran begins with a remarkable anecdote from 1964. During celebrations for Shakespeare's 400th birthday, the Catholic church invited RSC actors to Rome for a recital before Pope Paul VI. The company's own First Folio, insured for £25,000, travelled separately by train. After the recital, actor Dorothy Tutin impulsively held up the Folio to be blessed, but the pope misunderstood and treated it as a gift, handing it to a cardinal. Swift intervention by the Archbishop of Westminster was needed to retrieve the book and prevent Stratford from losing its sole copy.
Throughout his travels, Sher is never far from Doran's thoughts. In Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral, Doran reflects on Tony's funeral and his own eroded faith, hoping to emulate C.S. Lewis in transforming grief into happy remembrance. Flying into Cape Town, he recalls swapping seats with Sher for a window view of Table Mountain. At Cornell University on a 9/11 anniversary, he remembers Shakespeare sonnets about ruin and loss.
Eccentricities and Discoveries
Doran admits to occasional Folio fatigue, but boredom is kept at bay through his delight in new information and variations. In Skipton, Yorkshire, where a Folio lacks comedies, he speculates if the Brontë sisters read it and if Charlotte ripped out plays she loathed. In Glasgow, he finds excitement in a Folio listing 22 actors' names, including Shakespeare and John Lowin, who took over Falstaff, feeling as if he is "back in the tiring-house of the Globe theatre."
Doran also has a sharp eye for forgers and fakers who capitalised on Shakespeare. He recounts William Henry Ireland's 1795 claim of a lost play, Vortigern and Rowena, laughed off stage at Drury Lane, and John Payne Collier's 19th-century emendations exposed as fraudulent. James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, founder of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, is noted for vandalising Stratford's Folio by removing the Droeshout engraving.
Global Encounters and Ultimate Destination
Doran's travels include meetings with the emperor of Japan and King Charles, who phoned the dying Sher and later invited Doran to inspect the Windsor First Folio. Charles showed his own annotated Shakespeare edition, highlighting passages like Henry V's "I think the king is but a man, as I am." The journey culminates at the Folger Library in Washington, which holds an incredible 82 surviving Folios.
By the end, Doran's Folio mania becomes infectious, teaching readers about how these volumes were printed, disseminated, collected, and sometimes defaced. While a valuable addition to Shakespeare scholarship, the book is more: a human story about turning grief into an impossible quest and finding consoling hope. Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare by Greg Doran is published by Bloomsbury.
