Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why does Samuel Pepys’s diary still matter 200 years after it was first published? In her new book, The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary, h...

Celebrating Elizabethan Cooking, with Sam Bilton

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What did people really eat in Shakespeare’s England? In her new book, Much Ado About Cooking, food historian Sam Bilton uncovers the vibrant and sur...

Hamnet, with Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hamnet, the acclaimed novel by Maggie O’Farrell, is now a major film. The story imagines the life and death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, whose lo...

London's First Playhouse and Shakespeare

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Before Shakespeare became a literary icon, he was a working writer trying to earn a living in an emerging and often precarious new industry. In The Dr...

Mary, Queen of Scots, with Jade Scott

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imprisoned for nearly 20 years by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, fought her battles through words, sending and receiving coded le...

Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Long before Shakespeare became a household name, there was Richard Burbage. As the first actor to play Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear, Bu...

Harriet Walter: New Words for Shakespeare's Women

07 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare’s plays are filled with unforgettable women—but too often, their voices are cut short. Ophelia never gets to defend herself. Gertrude ...

Stephen Greenblatt on Christopher Marlowe

23 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were both born in 1564, rising from working-class origins finding success in the new world of the theater....

Al Letson on his play Julius X

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You may know Al Letson as a journalist—he’s the host of the popular investigative podcast Reveal. Before that, he created and hosted the public ra...

Director Rosa Joshi on Julius Caesar Today

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar feels urgently contemporary in Rosa Joshi’s new production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival—one of America’s lar...

Reading Jane Austen in the 21st Century with Patricia A. Matthew

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

250 years after her birth, Jane Austen is more popular than ever, with the publication of new editions of her novels and numerous new film adaptations...

Inside Hamlet’s Head with Jeremy McCarter

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What if, instead of just watching Hamlet, you could step inside the prince’s mind? A revelatory new audio production reimagines Shakespeare’s ico...

Shakespeare, Money, and Meaning-Making

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can reading King Lear help us rethink economic policy? Can Measure for Measure shape how we talk about justice, or Hamlet help us face grief? That’s...

Staging Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When live performance shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen weren’t sure when—or if—they’d ever be onst...

Simon Russell Beale on Shakespeare, from Hamlet to Titus

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Called “the finest actor of his generation,” Sir Simon Russell Beale has played just about everyone in Shakespeare’s canon—Hamlet, Lear, Macbe...

Shakespeare’s Boy Player Alexander Cooke

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Shakespeare’s time, the actresses were boys—and for the most celebrated of them, fame came early but could end abruptly with a voice change. In...

King Lear and Mao’s China, with Nan Z. Da

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nan Z. Da, in her book The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear, finds unsettling parallels between Shakespeare’s play and 20th-century China under Mao Zedo...

Top Pop Songs of the 1600s

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What were the top musical hits of Shakespeare’s England? What lyrics were stuck in people’s heads? What stories did they sing on repeat? The 100 ...

The Yorkist Pretender, with Jo Harkin

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who was Lambert Simnel—the boy who nearly claimed the Tudor throne? In late 15th-century England, identity wasn’t just a matter of birth—it coul...

Surekha Davies on the Making of Monsters

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Surekha Davies joins us to explore how ideas of wonder, race, and the monstrous shaped European thought in the age of empire. These weren’...

Reimagining Judith Shakespeare with Grace Tiffany

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Judith Shakespeare’s life is a mystery. While history records her as the younger daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, much of her stor...

Julia Armfield Reimagines King Lear in a Drowning World

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How does Shakespeare’s King Lear resonate in a world facing climate catastrophe? Novelist Julia Armfield explores this question in Private Rites, a ...

Lauren Gunderson on the Women of Hamlet

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What if Gertrude had more power than we thought? What if Ophelia’s fate wasn’t sealed from the start? And what does it really mean to mother a pri...

Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did early modern England understand race and how has that influenced our thinking? Race is often considered a recent construct, but Shakespeare’...

Nisha Sharma on Adapting Shakespeare for Modern Romances

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do Shakespeare’s timeless themes translate to the South Asian diaspora? Could the man from Stratford himself be reimagined as a meddling auntie?...

Olivia Hussey: The Girl on the Balcony (Rebroadcast)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Olivia Hussey, whose spirited portrayal of Juliet when she was just a teenager herself became iconic for generations of people watching the 1968 film ...

Shakespeare and his contemporaries, with Darren Freebury-Jones

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be called an “upstart crow”? In 1592, a pamphlet titled Greene’s groats-worth of witte described William Shakespeare, in th...

Directing Romeo and Juliet, with Sam Gold

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

2024 has been the year of the iconic lovers Romeo and Juliet, and director Sam Gold has brought a bold new production of the timeless tragedy to Broa...

The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, with Helen Castor

26 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a king believes he rules by divine right yet loses the trust of his people through his tyrannical actions? In this episode, acclaime...

Studying Shakespeare Now

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Forget dusty textbooks and silent classrooms—the Folger Shakespeare Library has released new teaching guides designed to make the Bard’s works mor...

Farah Karim-Cooper on The Great White Bard (Rebroadcast)

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Can you love Shakespeare and be an antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper’s book The Great White Bard explores the language of race and difference in Shakes...

How Shakespeare Revolutionized Tragedy, with Rhodri Lewis

22 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare is often associated with tragedy, but did you know that he changed the genre? In this episode, Rhodri Lewis, professor of English at Princ...

Tabitha Stanmore on Practical Magic in Shakespeare’s England

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Forget witches, broomsticks, and cauldrons bubbling over—when it came to real magic in Shakespeare’s time, most people turned to their local cunni...

Will Tosh on the Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare

24 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How did Shakespeare engage with the complexities of gender and sexuality in his time? Was his portrayal of cross-dressing and same-sex attraction simp...

Throughlines, with Ayanna Thompson and Ruben Espinosa

10 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can educators effectively incorporate discussions about race into the study of Shakespeare and other premodern texts in the college classroom? Bar...

Juliet, Then and Now, with Sophie Duncan

27 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Was Romeo and Juliet your first brush with Shakespeare? Whether it was on stage, on screen in films by Franco Zeffirelli or Baz Luhrmann or Shonda Rhi...

Completing the Canon: Barry Edelstein on The Old Globe's Henry 6

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This summer San Diego’s Old Globe became one of only 10 theaters in America who have produced all of Shakespeare’s plays (or 11, depending on how ...

Colman Domingo on Sing Sing and the Power of Theater

30 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Can a musical comedy featuring Hamlet and Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger change lives? Actor, playwright, and director Colman Domingo th...

The Brief Life and Big Impact of the Federal Theatre Project, with James Shapiro

16 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine: a fiercely idealistic, politically progressive artist takes the stand at a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee. The chair o...

A Tour of the Newly-Reopened Folger | Part 2: Research at the Folger

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After a four-year renovation, the Folger Shakespeare Library is now open with 12,000 square feet of new public spaces. But behind the scenes, in our o...

A Tour of the Newly-Reopened Folger | Part 1

18 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On June 21, the Folger reopens after a four-year renovation. The reimagined Folger has brand-new public exhibition spaces where we can introduce visi...

Fred Wilson on his New, Othello-Inspired Work for the Folger

04 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fred Wilson’s artistic output includes painting, sculpture, photography, and collage, among other media. But his 1992 work “Mining the Museum” a...

Second Chances, Shakespeare, and Freud, with Adam Phillips and Stephen Greenblatt

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The desire for a second chance provides the engine for many of Shakespeare’s plays. In their new book, Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud, Shakes...

Mary Zimmerman on Adapting Ovid and Directing Shakespeare

07 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses was on Broadway in 2002, it won a host of awards, including the Drama Desk, Drama League, and...

Judi Dench On Seven Decades of Shakespeare, with Brendan O’Hea

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, Dame Judi  Dench and actor/director Brendan O'Hea chat about her long history with the Bard...

Shakespeare and the Environment, with Todd Andrew Borlik

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Land enclosure. Wildlife management. Erosion. Pollution. Mining practices. Today, we’d call these environmental issues. But, hundreds of years befor...

Ramie Targoff on Women Writers of the English Renaissance

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously imagined what might have happened if Shakespeare had a sister who was as gifted a writer as he was. ...

Green World: Michelle Ephraim on Discovering Shakespeare and Reevaluating The Merchant of Venice

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her new memoir, "Green World," Shakespeare scholar Michelle Ephraim tells the story of how she came to Shakespeare relatively late in her education...

Eddie Izzard on Performing Hamlet Solo

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Eddie Izzard has a long record of dramatic roles. But it’s her decades of experience as a stand-up comedian that prepared Izzard for her recent solo...

Shakespeare and Disgust, with Bradley J. Irish

13 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe there really was something rotten in Denmark. On this episode, we talk with Bradley J. Irish about disgust in Shakespeare. In his new book, Iris...

Rita Dove on Shakespeare and Her Poem of Welcome for the Folger

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When the Folger reopens on June 21 and you come to take a walk in our new west garden, look down at the garden bed. There, you'll see a new poem, writ...

John Guy And Julia Fox on Their New Biography of Anne Boleyn

16 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Even after appearing in a Shakespeare play, historical romance novels, a Broadway musical, and prestige TV dramas, there's still more to learn about A...

David and Ben Crystal Share Shakespeare Quotations for Your Everyday Life

02 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare has the perfect lines for riding into battle or stumbling around a stormy heath. But does he have the right stuff to take us on a daily co...

What Happened to the Princes in the Tower, with Philippa Langley

19 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The most unforgivable crime in Richard III has to be when the king orders the murder of his two young nephews, Edward and Richard. But what if Richar...

Will Somer: Peter K. Andersson on Henry VIII's Court Fool

05 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What comes to mind when you think about a "court jester?"  What if we told you that fools in the Tudor court didn’t look or sound anything like the...

Isabelle Schuler on Lady Macbeth and Queen Hereafter

21 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Isabelle Schuler’s debut novel Queen Hereafter attempts to fill in a backstory for Lady Macbeth. The book takes place in 11th century Scotland, wher...

400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio, with Emma Smith

07 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The First Folio—the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays—hit bookstores 400 years ago this November. Emma Smith of Oxford University t...

The Bloomsbury Group and Shakespeare, with Marjorie Garber

24 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We talk with Harvard Professor Marjorie Garber about how modernist writers of London’s Bloomsbury Group made Shakespeare their own. Garber’s most ...

Patrick Stewart on a Life Shaped by Shakespeare

10 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Patrick Stewart joins us on the podcast to talk about how Shakespeare has shaped his life. Stewart tells host Barbara Bogaev about his Yorkshire y...

Michael Patrick Thornton on Learning to Breathe Again with Shakespeare

26 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes, the beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry takes your breath away. In the case of today’s guest, Shakespeare gave him his breath back. You may...

The Many Lives of John Donne with Katherine Rundell

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We talk with author Katherine Rundell about the extraordinary life —or should we say lives? — of John Donne, who wrote some of the 17th century’...

Shakespeare and the Ocean, with Steve Mentz

29 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we sail the seven seas with Shakespeare. In addition to being a dedicated swimmer, Steve Mentz is a professor at St. John’s University. His b...

Farah Karim-Cooper on The Great White Bard

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Can you love Shakespeare and be an antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper's new book, The Great White Bard, explores the language of race and difference in p...

Isabella Hammad on Enter Ghost

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A Palestinian production of Hamlet in the West Bank is the backdrop for Isabella Hammad’s new novel, Enter Ghost. Hammad’s first novel, the beau...

Mat Osman's The Ghost Theatre Imagines the Lives of Elizabethan London's Child Actors

18 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mat Osman's new novel, The Ghost Theatre, takes us flying over the rooftops of Elizabethan London and down into the gritty lives of its child actors. ...

Adrian Lester on Playing Rosalind, Henry V, Othello, and Hamlet

04 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We could listen to Adrian Lester talk about acting all day… but he's a busy man, so we’ll settle for this 37 minute episode. The actor joins us t...

Greg Doran on Forty Years of Directing Shakespeare

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On today’s episode, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s former Artistic Director takes a look back at four decades of staging Shakespeare. Greg Doran’...

David West Read on & Juliet

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Start with Shakespeare’s "star-crossed" lovers and fold in the songs of Swedish pop hitmaker Max Martin… what do you get? The hit Broadway musical...

Robert O'Hara on Directing Richard III

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Robert O’Hara joins us to talk about directing last year’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Richard III, starring Danai Gurira of Marvel's "B...

Publishing Shakespeare's First Folio, with Chris Laoutaris

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publishing of the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. Eighteen of those plays, in...

Lolita Chakrabarti on Adapting Hamnet for the Stage

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lolita Chakrabarti is the playwright of Red Velvet, about 19th-century Black actor Ira Aldridge, and has adapted Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities an...

James Ijames on Fat Ham

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hamlet has been adapted, retold, and reinvented countless ways. But you’ve never seen a version of Hamlet quite like James Ijames’s Fat Ham, which...

Marion Turner on The Wife of Bath: A Biography

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In her book The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Marion Turner reacquaints us with a remarkable, vital character: Alison, Wife of Bath, the most famous fict...

Patrick Page on King Lear and Shakespeare's Villains

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You might recognize Patrick Page from films like Spirited, or shows like The Gilded Age, or from his Broadway roles as Hades in Hadestown for which he...

Artificial Intelligence Goes to English Class, with Jennifer Black, John Ladd, and Laura Turchi

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Folger: Hey ChatGPT! Could you write a six line Shakespearean monologue in iambic pentameter about an interview with Jennifer Black, Laura Turchi,...

Lucy Wooding on Tudor England: A History

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We can’t seem to get enough of the Tudor dynasty and its soap-opera twists. But in her book Tudor England: A History, Lucy Wooding argues that to re...

Debra Ann Byrd on Becoming Othello: A Black Girl's Journey

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Theater-maker Debra Ann Byrd has played Othello in three different productions: first, in a staged reading in 2013, then again in 2015 and 2019. Each ...

Ian Smith on Black Shakespeare

03 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race, Dr. Ian Smith of Lafayette College argues that Shakespeare’s plays engage with ques...

Talene Monahon on Her New Revenge Comedy, Jane Anger

20 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Talene Monahon’s new play Jane Anger, a narcissistic William Shakespeare is wrestling with writers’ block while working on King Lear. When Will...

Fiona Ritchie on Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You may not have heard of Sarah Siddons, but if you’ve seen a production of Macbeth recently, you may have experienced her influence. In the late 1...

Billy Collins on Writing Short Poems and Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Billy Collins is one of America’s most well-known poets. He served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003. His poetry collections frequently show u...

Adrian Noble on How to Direct Shakespeare

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A director makes a play add up to more than the sum of its parts. That's something Adrian Noble knows as well as anyone. Noble has directed numerous p...

Ian McKellen on Richard III, Macbeth, and Gandalf

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the second part of our special extended interview with Sir Ian McKellen, he tells us about some of his most famous roles: playing Macbeth opposite ...

Ian McKellen on Playing Hamlet

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

He played Hamlet in his thirties… and again in his eighties. In between? Edgar, Romeo, Leontes, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Iago, Richard III, Prospero, an...

What Shakespeare Thought About the Mind, with Helen Hackett

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve ever been watching Hamlet and asked yourself, “What on earth is Hamlet thinking?!” you’re not alone. But to figure that out, you mig...

John Adams Gives Antony and Cleopatra the Operatic Treatment

12 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Celebrated American composer John Adams’s newest opera takes its inspiration from Shakespeare. . Adams talks with host Barbara Bogaev about how he t...

Paterson Joseph: Julius Caesar and Me (Rebroadcast)

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This summer marks the tenth anniversary of a landmark production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Their 2012 Julius Caesar was Britain’s first eve...

Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Tabard Inn, with Martha Carlin (Rebroadcast)

02 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What if Shakespeare and his friends had gotten together and carved their names on the wall of an inn made famous by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Ta...

The Robben Island Shakespeare, with David Schalkwyk (Rebroadcast)

20 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

While Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on South Africa's Robben Island, one of the other political prisoners, Sonny Venkatrathnam, managed to retain a ...

Peter Brook (Rebroadcast)

05 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Legendary director Peter Brook died last week at the age of 97. Brook was one of theater’s most influential directors. His 1970 A Midsummer Night’...

Andrea Mays on The Millionaire and the Bard (Rebroadcast)

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Henry Clay Folger paid a world record price for a book—not once, but twice—as he became the world's leading collector of Shakespeare First Folios....

Joe Papp and Shakespeare in the Park, with Kenneth Turan (Rebroadcast)

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Joe Papp was responsible for some of modern American theater's most iconic institutions: New York City's free Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Thea...

Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn on Their Hamlet Opera

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A new opera version of Hamlet is onstage at New York’s Metropolitan Opera through June 9. Composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn talk wi...

Shakespeare and Ukraine, with Irena Makaryk

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Director Oleksandr “Les” Kurbas’s 1920 Macbeth was the first production of a Shakespeare play in Ukraine. Kurbas staged the play in the midst of...

Leonard Barkan on Reading Shakespeare Reading Me

26 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes that theater holds a “mirror up to nature.” In his new book, Princeton professor Leonard Barkan tells us that when h...

Pamela Hutchinson on Asta Nielsen's Hamlet

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1921, Asta Nielsen, one of the world’s biggest movie star in the world had just formed her own production company, and decided to open it up by p...

How the Commedia Dell'Arte's Actresses Changed the Shakespearean Stage, with Pamela Allen Brown

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

English women didn’t act on London’s professional stages until the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. But Dr. Pamela Allen Brown, author of The ...

Matías Piñeiro on His Shakespeare-Adjacent Films

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

An Argentine woman translates "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" while incessantly taping travel postcards to a wall. An actress in Buenos Aires seduces he...

Molly Yarn on Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors'

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Over the centuries there have been hundreds of editions of Shakespeare’s plays: Small, inexpensive schoolbook copies of individual plays, massive, l...

Stephen Marche on How Shakespeare Changed Everything

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Even 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare’s influence is profound. But is it right to say that he changed everything? That the assertion S...