recto

Exterior becomes interior — or verso becomes recto — in Leedham’s wittily jumbled tableaux.

Then on the recto the book opens up a trapdoor: “But what else is time?”

On each recto, a square of a different color contains a riddle, begging us to turn the page to reveal the identity of the speaker.

Part of the appeal of the Folger paperbacks is their accessible design: On the recto page, the original text, uncut; on the verso, helpful vocabulary words, often accompanied by tiny reproductions of Elizabethan etchings.

Much of the scientific work over the years has been focused on piecing together the material on the front, or “recto,” of unrolled scrolls.