Like quills upon the fretful porpentine

The erudite among you will recognise the title of this post as a quotation from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and wonder what it can possibly have to do with paperfolding. I am not, however, quoting it directly from Shakespeare, but from the lesser known writer E H Barker Esq of Thetford, Norfolk, who, in 1828, published a book of reminiscences about one of his teachers, the Rev. Samuel Parr. In contrast to Hamlet, this seems to me to be about as obscure a publication as you can find.

The passage in question says:

In older books in English, ‘twisted’ is often used as a synonym for ‘folded’. But what were these ‘twisted’ or ‘folded’ papers? Fortunately a note in the 'Addenda and Corrigenda' section of the same book throws more light on this incident:

This is the earliest mention of folded paper-darts that we have. While there is no illustration to show us what these particular paper darts looked like, it seems to me that the words ‘I placed them between my forefingers’ are sufficient to show that it is indeed the familiar Paper Dart that is being described here, and not, for instance, tiny paper cones launched from a blowpipe.

Incidentally, the earliest illustration of a Paper Dart only appears 31 years later in the book 'Games and Sports for Young Boys', which was published in 1859.

As a footnote, another book, ‘Memoirs of Charles Mathews, Comedian' which was written (or perhaps only edited) by his wife, Anne Jackson Mathews, and published in 1839, four years after Mathew's death in 1835, contains a similar story to that told about the Reverend Parr:

I am much less inclined to believe that this version is true, since it seems unlikely to me that the impact of the darts on the wig would not be felt. However, I leave final judgement on this question to you …