Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Episodes
Black Women Shakespeareans, 1821 – 1960, with Joyce Green MacDonald
01 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1821 and 1960, it would have been vanishingly rare to see a Black woman onstage performing Shakespeare. In Dr. Joyce Green MacDonald’s chapt...
Cutting Plays for Performance, with Aili Huber
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It might surprise you to learn that just about every production of a Shakespeare play that you’ve ever seen onstage has been cut, from student shows...
J.R. Thorp on Learwife
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A banished queen receives word that her husband and three daughters are dead. Learwife, a new novel by J.R. Thorp, picks up where Shakespeare’s King...
Lena Cowen Orlin on The Private Life of William Shakespeare
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Lena Cowen Orlin’s new book, The Private Life of Shakespeare, isn’t exactly a biography. Rather, it’s an exhaustive return to the primary so...
Sir Antony Sher (Rebroadcast)
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Antony Sher, one the greatest Shakespearean actors of the 20th and 21st centuries, died in December, 2021, in Stratford Upon Avon. He was 72. In 2...
Holidays in Shakespeare's England, with Erika T. Lin
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us have holiday traditions: we trim trees, spin dreidels, trick-or-treat, set off fireworks, and host parties. People had holiday traditions i...
Bringing Latinx Voices to Shakespeare, with Cynthia Santos DeCure and Micha Espinosa
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cynthia Santos DeCure and Micha Espinosa both grew up speaking English and Spanish, and they share memories of being made to feel like their voices, d...
Shakespeare's Language and Race, with Patricia Akhimie and Carol Mejia LaPerle
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Close reading of Shakespeare is not a new concept. But this kind of close reading is more challenging—and it can help us interpret Shakespeare’s w...
Shakespeare in Latinx Communities, with José Cruz González and David Lozano
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Theater artists José Cruz González and David Lozano join us in this episode. Their conversation “On Making Shakespeare Relevant to Latinx Communit...
Shakespeare and the British Royal Family, with Gordon McMullan
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Shakespeare wrote a lot about English kings and queens. Over the last three hundred years, a lot of English kings and queens have gotten really into S...
Mike Lew on Teenage Dick
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Mike Lew's play "Teenage Dick," Richard, a high-school senior with cerebral palsy, is determined to become class president by any means necessary. ...
Mona Awad on All's Well
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In her new novel, "All’s Well," author Mona Awad combines elements of Shakespeare's "All’s Well That Ends Well" and "Macbeth" and the 1999 movie "...
How We Hear Shakespeare's Plays, with Carla Della Gatta
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Shakespeare’s time, people talked about going to hear a play and going to see one in equal measure. So, what exactly do we hear when we hear one ...
The Restoration Reinvention of Shakespeare
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The next time someone complains about a director changing or tampering with Shakespeare… we’ve got an answer for them. The first generation of th...
Madeline Sayet on Where We Belong
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In her play "Where We Belong," Mohegan director playwright, and performer Madeline Sayet recalls her 2015 journey to the UK to pursue the PhD in Shake...
Geoffrey Marsh on Shakespeare's Neighbors
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What would we find out about you if we got to know your neighbors? What if we took a walk around the neighborhood where you live? That's the way that...
Race and Blackness in Elizabethan England
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When did the concept of race develop? How far should we look back to find the attitudes that bolster white supremacy? We ask Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, an...
All the Sonnets of Shakespeare
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over 400 years after Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published in 1609, what is left to learn? "All the Sonnets of Shakespeare," a new edition of t...
"Richard III" in Prison
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Frannie Shepherd-Bates founded Shakespeare in Prison in 2012. Nine years later, SIP is the signature community program of the Detroit Public Theatre, ...
Simon Godwin on "Romeo and Juliet"
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The National Theatre’s new production of "Romeo and Juliet" was meant to premiere in the summer of 2020. But when the COVID-19 pandemic began, Simon...
Shakespeare and Lost Plays
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the texts of roughly three thousand plays from the great age of Elizabethan theater are lost to us. The plays that remain constitute only a six...
Stephen Hopkins and "Stephano"
16 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He was in a shipwreck. He was at Jamestown. He was on the Mayflower. And maybe, just maybe, he’s in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Documentary filmma...
Meme García on "house of sueños"
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For generations, artists have been shaping and changing Shakespeare to fit their times. The best adaptations add specific textures of place and cultur...
Shakespeare in the Harlem Renaissance
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about the Harlem Renaissance, theater might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But, says Dr. Freda Scott Giles, theater played ...
Naomi Miller on Mary Sidney Herbert and "Imperfect Alchemist"
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Naomi Miller’s novel "Imperfect Alchemist" is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: a poet, playwright, trans...
Shakespeare and "Game of Thrones"
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson of Harvard University knew just how HBO's "Game of Thrones" would play...
Shakespeare, Science, and Art
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Does Hamlet live in a Ptolemaic or Copernican solar system? Is Queen Mab a germ? Which falls faster: a feather or the Duke of Gloucester? In Shakespea...
"Fat Rascals": In the Kitchen with John Tufts
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Tufts was playing Hal in a production of "Henry IV, Part 1" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Every night, he would call Falstaff “that roast...
The Victorian Cult Of Shakespeare
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For most of the 1700s, Shakespeare was considered a very good playwright. But in the 1800s, and especially during the Victorian period, Shakespeare be...
Black Lives Matter in "Titus Andronicus"
10 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his classes at Binghamton University, David Sterling Brown and his students examine Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of Critical Race Theory....
The Show Must Go Online
27 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In March, theaters were beginning to cancel ongoing and upcoming productions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Glasgow-based actor Robert Myle...
Writing About the Plague in Shakespeare’s England
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1348 and the early years of the 18th century, successive waves of the plague rolled across Europe, killing millions of people and affecting ev...
Lady Romeo
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Charlotte Cushman was one of the most famous American theater artists of the mid-19th century. And while she was known for her Lady Macbeth and Oliver...
Richard II on the Radio
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to theater in the United States. Broadway and regional theaters are dark, and Shakespeare festivals across ...
Shakespeare in Black and White (rebroadcast)
01 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the second of two episodes about Black Americans and Shakespeare, we talk with scholars Marvin MacAllister and Ayanna Thompson about the period bet...
African Americans and Shakespeare (rebroadcast)
18 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
African American engagement with Shakespeare goes back a long way—maybe even farther than you'd imagine. And like so much else surrounding American ...
Maggie O'Farrell on "Hamnet"
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Anne and William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died in 1596, when he was 11 years old. We don’t know too much more about him. But novelist Maggie O’F...
Directing Shakespeare
21 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
No two theater directors approach Shakespeare’s plays in the same way. When it comes to setting, blocking, costuming, casting, and cutting, there ar...
The Booksellers
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Folger started with Henry and Emily Folger, two collectors who loved books and Shakespeare and had the means to pursue what they loved. They were ...
The King's Men
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who were the actors who first performed Shakespeare’s plays? You might know the names of some of the King’s Men—the company of which Shakespeare...
Jonathan Bate on the Classics and Shakespeare
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Every artist needs inspiration. In this episode, we talk to Sir Jonathan Bate. His book How the Classics Made Shakespeare, published by Princeton Univ...
Sandra Newman on "The Heavens"
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A young woman falls asleep in the 21st century and slowly finds herself slipping into 16th-century England, where she falls in love with an obscure yo...
Kathryn Harkup on "Death by Shakespeare"
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s quite a list: Hanged. Prison fever. Stabbed. Stabbed. Poisoned. Beheaded. Beheaded. “Malady of France.” Cannonball. Burnt. Bitten. Eaten. M...
Shakespeare and Solace
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Do you have a passage from Shakespeare that you return to in difficult times? Is there a sonnet or soliloquy you keep coming back to for comfort or wi...
The Long Life of Shakespeare's Sonnets
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we think of Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a triumph. We read them, puzzle over them, and recite them. We compare our significant others to summers...
Emma Smith on "This Is Shakespeare"
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Is there a right way to interpret Shakespeare’s plays? No, says Oxford University’s Emma Smith, and there’s a good reason for that. In her new b...
James Shapiro on "Shakespeare in a Divided America"
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Despite our country feeling more divided than it has in 50 years, there are still things that tie us together. Loving our families, cheering on a favo...
Abraham Lincoln and Shakespeare
03 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are lots of stories about Abraham Lincoln and his passion for Shakespeare. Some are true, while others are made up out of whole cloth. We talk t...
Shakespeare and Folktales
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You probably know where Shakespeare got the ideas for his plays. The Histories come from Holinshed’s Chronicles. Caesar and other Roman plays depend...
Books and Reading in Shakespeare's England
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Do you have a book that means something special to you? 400 years ago, when printed books were a fairly new thing, they meant something to their owner...
Shakespeare's Sonnets
21 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Did Shakespeare intend to publish his sonnets? For whom were they written? What do they reveal about their author? We talk to Dr. Jane Kingsley-Smith ...
The History of Shakespeare in American Schools
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We’re willing to bet that at some point in school, you read at least of one Shakespeare’s plays. Did you ever wonder why that is? How did Shakespe...
Peter Brook
10 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we spend 40 minutes with one of the world’s most influential directors. Peter Brook has directed John Gielgud, Glenda Jackson, Ben ...
Kenny Leon on his "Much Ado About Nothing"
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Director Kenny Leon’s production of "Much Ado About Nothing" mesmerized audiences during last summer’s Shakespeare in the Park. Now, you can watch...
Women Performers in Shakespeare's Time
12 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Think there were no women onstage in Shakespeare’s time? Think again. We talk to scholar Clare McManus about where and how women performed in early ...
Mark Haddon on The Porpoise
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time author Mark Haddon’s books take twists and turns that sometimes seem to only make sense in the con...
Shakespeare in Immigrant New York
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 19th century, a new influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Italy arrived in the United States. Many of them settled in the Lower Manhatta...
Groundbreaking Discovery: John Milton's Copy of Shakespeare
01 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In September, the world of literary scholarship got some big news. It was discovered that a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, housed in the Free Li...
Iqbal Khan
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“If, with Shakespeare, we can thrill and tease an audience into embracing unknowing, that is one of the most important gifts that we can give,” sa...
Shakespeare and Opera, with Colleen Fay
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not easy to turn a Shakespeare’s play into an opera, says Colleen Fay. They have too many words, too many characters, and too many plots. But...
Othello and Blackface (rebroadcast)
20 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Act 3, scene 4 of Othello, Othello tells Desdemona that the handkerchief he gave her was “dyed in mummy.” What does that mean? According to Laf...
Charlotte Cushman: When Romeo Was A Woman (rebroadcast)
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You probably have a mental image of the Victorian Era. Straitlaced, rigid, and repressed, right? Meet Charlotte Cushman, born 1816. She was an actor k...
If Shakespeare Wrote "Mean Girls"
23 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What would it be like if Shakespeare had written Mean Girls? How about Back to the Future: "Be ready for audacious episodes. Whither we go we hav...
Andrew McConnell Stott on the Shakespeare Jubilee
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
David Garrick’s 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-on-Avon was like an 18th-century Fyre Festival. From overcrowding to pouring rain, the event w...
Lisa Klein on "Ophelia"
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wanted to know more about Ophelia? What does she think about the events at Elsinore? What is her relationship to Hamlet? Whose account o...
Casey Wilder Mott and Fran Kranz on their LA "Midsummer"
11 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Director Casey Wilder Mott’s 2017 film adaptation of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" sets Shakespeare’s story in modern Los Angeles, where aspiring ...
The Gender Politics of "Kiss Me, Kate"
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A new production of Kiss Me, Kate is on Broadway now. It features Cole Porter’s memorable music and Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase as Lilli Vanessi a...
Glenda Jackson
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The great Glenda Jackson is back on the stage. In 1992, the Emmy and two-time Academy Award winner was elected to Parliament. She spent the next 23 ye...
Michael Kahn
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After over thirty years as the artistic director of Washington, DC’s Tony-winning Shakespeare Theatre Company, Michael Kahn is retiring. Kahn has di...
Hamlet 360: Virtual Reality Shakespeare
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You don’t need a ticket to see the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s most recent production of Hamlet. You don’t even need to leave your house....
Harriet Walter
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, London’s Donmar Warehouse opened an all-female production of Julius Caesar, starring Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus and directed by Ton...
Deborah Harkness: A Discovery of Witches
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1994, Deborah Harkness was doing research at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library when she stumbled across the Book of Soyga, a long-lost manuscr...
Acting, Emotion, and Science on Shakespeare's Stage
05 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How do actors do what they do? How do they stir up emotions, both in themselves and in us as we watch them? Joseph Roach’s 1985 book The Player’s ...
Simon Mayo: "Mad Blood Stirring"
19 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In a novel just released in the US, author and longtime BBC radio host Simon Mayo tells an amazing—but true—story: that England’s first all-blac...
Edwin and John Wilkes Booth
05 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Actor Edwin Booth was one of the 19th century’s biggest stars. One of the illegitimate sons of equally-famous actor Junius Brutus Booth, he made tho...
Olivia Hussey: The Girl on the Balcony
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Olivia Hussey was just fifteen when she was cast in Franco Zeffirelli’s "Romeo and Juliet." When the film was released in October 1968, it catapulte...
Duke Ellington, Shakespeare, and "Such Sweet Thunder"
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts at Ontario, Canada’s Stratford Festival. Afterward, festival staff asked the legendary composer—...
The ABCs of Performing Hamlet
12 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine getting the chance to interview Jude Law, Maxine Peake, Adrian Lester, David Tennant, Simon Russell Beale, and Nicholas Hytner about Shakespea...
Pop Culture Shakespeare with Stefanie Jochman
27 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Do you remember what sparked your interest in Shakespeare? Was it a great performance, a magic moment in a high school English class, or a clever adap...
Julie Schumacher on The Shakespeare Requirement
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Should college students be required to study Shakespeare? As American universities examine the role of the liberal arts and humanities in our society,...
How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What is a knave? How about a varlet? Did people in Shakespeare’s time really throw the contents of their chamber pots out of their windows? And was ...
Shakespeare Uncovered
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For three years, Shakespeare Uncovered has provided a crash course in Shakespeare’s best-known plays, presented in hour-long documentary form and gu...
Understanding Peter Sellars
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Director Peter Sellars once staged "Antony and Cleopatra" in a Harvard dormitory swimming pool. His King Lear owned a Lincoln Continental. His work is...
Imagining Shakespeare's Wife
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The family. The cottage. The age difference. The pregnancy. The children. The second best bed. The grave. We know so little about Anne Hathaway, but i...
Steven Berkoff: Shakespeare's Heroes and Villains
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Since the 1990s, playwright and actor Steven Berkoff has been traveling the world performing a one-actor show called "Shakespeare’s Villains." It’...
Pop Sonnets (rebroadcast)
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Here’s the assignment. Fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, with an a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g rhyme scheme. Now: add Taylor Swift. It’s asto...
Joe Papp and Shakespeare in the Park
07 Aug 2018
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...
Still Dreaming: Shakespeare with Seniors
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011, Ben Steinfeld and Noah Brody, co-directors of New York’s Fiasco Theater, were invited to an assisted living facility and nursing home just ...
Elizabeth Norton: The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women
10 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What did everyday life look like for women throughout Tudor society? A new social history, "The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women by Elizabeth Norton," intr...
Stephen Greenblatt on Shakespeare's Tyrants
26 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“How is it possible for a whole country to fall into the hands of a tyrant? That’s a deeply unsettling question that Shakespeare grappled with aga...
Antioch Shakespeare Festival: John Lithgow, Robin Lithgow, and Tony Dallas
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of three summers in the 1950s, Arthur Lithgow, Meredith Dallas, and a troupe of actors they’d gathered performed every single one of...
Paterson Joseph: Julius Caesar and Me
29 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012 the Royal Shakespeare Company staged the first-ever, high-profile, all-black British Shakespeare production, "Julius Caesar," set in Africa. T...
Stephen Alford: London's Triumph
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
London in the time of William Shakespeare was a city in the midst of a phenomenal metamorphosis. During the course of Shakespeare’s professional lif...
Astor Place Riot
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly 30 people were killed in May 1849 when fans of American actor Edwin Forrest rioted inside and outside New York’s Astor Place Opera House duri...
How Shakespeare Changed My Life
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Hear Sir Ben Kingsley, Earle Hyman, Liev Schreiber, James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach, Estelle Parsons, and others open up about their experiences with Sh...
Antony Sher
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Antony Sher talks about his experiences with the Royal Shakespeare Company and his roles as Lear in 2016, Falstaff in 2013, and Richard III in 1984. I...
Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter on the George North Manuscript
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Independent scholar Dennis McCarthy and Lafayette College English professor June Schlueter say they have discovered a major new source for Shakespeare...
Derek Jacobi: Acting Shakespeare
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Actor Derek Jacobi talks about his remarkable career, including advice he received from Richard Burton, a disappointing rejection by the Royal Shakesp...
Derek Jacobi: Playing Hamlet
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Renowned actor Derek Jacobi talks about the Shakespearean role for which he is best known, Hamlet. Beginning at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1957, Jacobi h...
Bernard Cornwell: Fools and Mortals
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bernard Cornwell, a bestselling writer of historical fiction such as the Sharpe series, has turned to the world of the Elizabethan theater. His newest...