Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Episodes
Orson Welles
23 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Orson Welles is perhaps most famous for his panic-inducing radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds and the award-winning film Citizen Kane. For his ...
Marketing Shakespeare
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Getting audiences interested in Romeo and Juliet might be easy. But what about those more unfamiliar Shakespeare plays? Here’s an insider’s take o...
Sights, Sounds, and Smells of Elizabethan Theater
13 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sixteenth-century theater companies used a variety of physical and sensual staging effects in their productions to create a full-body experience for p...
Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare in China
29 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, on a state visit to Great Britain, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping called 17th-century Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu the “Shakespeare of the Ea...
Shakespeare and Science Fiction
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Shakespeare and his plays crop up in science fiction in a number of surprising places, from classic stories like Isaac Asimov’s “The Immortal Bard...
Edward St. Aubyn on Dunbar
01 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The author of the Patrick Melrose novels talks about adapting the story of one of Shakespeare’s most dysfunctional families for the Hogarth Shakespe...
Myths About Shakespeare (rebroadcast)
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Even if you’re not a Shakespeare scholar, there are things you have learned about Shakespeare and his plays throughout your life – that it’s bad...
Shakespeare in Swahililand
03 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Two literary scholars discuss Shakespeare’s influence on the politics, history, and literary culture of East Africa. Edward Wilson-Lee, the son of w...
Barry Edelstein: Thinking Shakespeare
19 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How do actors breathe life into Shakespeare’s texts? How do they take language that’s centuries old and make it sound so real and immediate? Barry...
Shakespeare and War
06 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his one-man show "Cry Havoc!" actor Stephan Wolfert, a US Army veteran, draws together lines in Shakespeare’s plays spoken by soldiers and former...
Bernstein, Shakespeare, and West Side Story
22 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Next year, 2018, is the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. To honor him, we’re taking a look at the creation of "West Side Story," Be...
Shakespeare's Kitchen
08 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How and what did the Elizabethans eat? The kitchens of Shakespeare’s time looked very different from our kitchens today, and that’s not all that h...
Akala and Hip-Hop Shakespeare
25 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“Is it Shakespeare, or is it hip-hop?” British poet, rapper, and educator Kingslee James Daley, who goes by the stage name Akala, likes to recite ...
Creating TNT's ‘Will:’ Craig Pearce and Shekhar Kapur
11 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
'Will,' the new series on TNT, tells stories derived from what we often call Shakespeare’s “lost years”—the time before he made a name for him...
Phyllida Lloyd and All-Female Shakespeare
27 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, the Donmar Warehouse presented an all-female production of "Julius Caesar," directed by Tony Award nominated director Phyllida Lloyd and star...
RSC's Digital Tempest
13 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty-first-century wizardry meets the seventeenth-century kind in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of "The Tempest" with digital effects creat...
Tracy Chevalier: New Boy
31 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Tracy Chevalier, author of "Girl With a Pearl Earring," takes on the tragedy of "Othello" in her latest novel, part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series....
The Globe to Globe Hamlet Tour
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, Shakespeare’s Globe in London sent a group of actors on a two-year tour to perform "Hamlet" all around the world. They finished on the 400t...
Adapting Shakespeare
03 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What exactly counts as a Shakespeare adaptation? And why bother in the first place? In this podcast episode, we talk with three writers who have wrest...
Shakespeare 400 Chicago
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, Chicago mobilized the city’s cultural and administrative resources in an unpr...
The Book of Will
04 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Shakespeare is famous today thanks in no small part to two members of his acting company, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who published a collection o...
How 'King Lear' Inspired 'Empire'
22 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
You can find Shakespeare in all sorts of places, including the Fox TV series "Empire." From its very beginning, "Empire" has fashioned itself on the p...
Something Rotten
07 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, a new musical called "Something Rotten!" opened on Broadway. The plot: Two brothers living in England in 1595 have had their playwriting care...
Shakespeare and Marlowe
21 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A few months ago, Oxford University Press decided that in the New Oxford Shakespeare, the plays Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 would no longer be listed ...
Juliet's Answer
07 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Starting in the 1930s, people began sending letters asking for advice on love and romance to Verona, Italy—addressed to Juliet. In 2014, a lovelorn ...
Shakespeare in California
24 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of Shakespeare in the American West, Hollywood immediately comes to mind, but this podcast also takes us back to the California Gold Rus...
Q Brothers
10 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Since 2002, Gregory and Jeffery Ameen Qaiyum, better known as G.Q. and J.A.Q – the Q Brothers – have been using hip-hop to adapt and update the pl...
Uncovering Shakespeare's House
13 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Since 2002, a major organization in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, has supported an archaeological dig on the former grounds o...
Shakespeare and YA Novels
29 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
While print sales of adult fiction are down in the last decade, the juvenile market – which includes young adult literature or "YA" – has actually...
Stephen Greenblatt on Shakespeare's Life Stories
15 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There are a surprising number of characters in Shakespeare who propose or ask or even demand that someone tell their life’s story. (Think of Hamlet’...
Shakespeare and Girlhood
01 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How does Shakespeare portray girls and girlhood in his plays, and what do those portrayals tell us about life in Elizabethan and Jacobean England? Our...
Shakespeare in Sign Language
18 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, is the world’s only university designed to be barrier-free for deaf and hard of hearing students. For more t...
Shakespeare in Solitary
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For ten years, Laura Bates, a professor at Indiana State University, taught Shakespeare to a group of inmates considered the worst of the worst – me...
Anecdotal Shakespeare
20 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The curses associated with the Scottish play. Using a real skull for the Yorick scene in "Hamlet." Over the centuries, these and other fascinating the...
How Shakespeare's First Folio Became a Star
06 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s works, printed in 1623, can sell for millions of dollars. But the First Folio wasn’t always va...
Elizabethan Medicine
23 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Being a patient in Shakespeare’s time was an adventure. You might be told to drink liquid gold or syrup of violets. You might undergo a violent pur...
American Moor
09 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
"Othello" is the story of a tragic murder and suicide involving a dark-skinned general and his aristocratic, white-skinned bride. Who should direct it...
The Food of Shakespeare's World
26 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This episode shifts slightly from our usual intense focus on Shakespeare. Instead, we are talking about the world that he inhabited, or at least a sma...
Recreating the Boydell Gallery
12 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades after Shakespeare's death, his works temporarily fell out of favor. His renaissance is usually credited to actor-manager David Garrick,...
Worlds Elsewhere
29 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, Andrew Dickson watched a Shakespeare play in London that set him off on a quest. When it ended, he had traveled to Poland, Germany, India, C...
Othello and Blackface
14 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast episode, which deals with race, Othello, and how the Elizabethans portrayed blackness onstage, offers a startling, new interpretation of ...
Shakespeare and Religion
31 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The period when Shakespeare was writing was one torn by disagreements over the proper method of observing Christianity in England. Protestantism was ...
Shakespeare in Africa
17 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When the British came to colonize the African continent in the middle of the 1800s, they brought Shakespeare with them. But after the British left pow...
Creation of the First Folio
03 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
We likely wouldn’t have half of Shakespeare’s plays without the First Folio of 1623. Imagine a world without "Macbeth," "Twelfth Night," or "Juliu...
Kill Shakespeare Comics
20 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a comic book series in which Shakespeare’s most popular characters team up in rival, warring camps bent on seizing control of the kingdom th...
Reduced Shakespeare Company
05 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Discovered in a treasure-filled parking lot in Leicester, England, an ancient manuscript proves to be the long-lost first play by none other than the ...
Inside the Folger Conservation Lab
22 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Folger is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, and the crown jewels of that collection are the 82 First Folios. To celebrate 400 years of...
Shakespeare and Magic
08 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST, the magician Prospero conjures up a storm, charms his daughter to sleep, and uses his power to control Ariel and other...
Shakespeare and World Cinema
23 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Shakespeare, of course, is not just performed in English, and his work is not just acted on stage. Foreign-language adaptations of Shakespeare on film...
Pop Sonnets
10 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There’s something that never ceases to astound when it comes to Shakespeare – the way this 400-year-old playwright continues to pop up in popular ...
Shakespeare In India
27 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What impact has Shakespeare’s writing had on Indian theater? And, how has Indian theater shaped and altered Shakespeare’s work? Shakespeare’s ...
Auditioning for Shakespeare
12 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Wayth, our guest for this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited, is Assistant Professor of Theatre at San Francisco State University and the author o...
Shakespeare Portraits
15 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
There’s no doubt you’ve seen images of Shakespeare – maybe in a book, a museum or an ad on the wall of a bus stop. So it’s safe to say: You im...
Shakespeare's Star Wars
01 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Shakespeare adaptations are a proud tradition. Prokofiev turned ROMEO AND JULIET into a ballet. Verdi turned MACBETH and OTHELLO into operas, and TH...
Andrea Mays: The Millionaire and the Bard
18 Nov 2015
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....
Shakespeare in the Caribbean
04 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Shakespeare and his plays are woven deeply into the culture of the Caribbean, both white and black. Even after centuries of British colonial rule came...
Stanley Wells on Great Shakespeare Actors
21 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
For the majority of audience members, Shakespeare is brought to life by the actors and actresses who speak his lines. Shakespeare scholar Stanley W...
Music for Shakespeare's Lyrics
07 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The majority of Shakespeare’s plays call for singing — sometimes it’s part of the action, sometimes it seems to spring out of nowhere. And whil...
The Year of Lear
23 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
1606 was a critical year for Shakespeare’s creative career. It was the year in which he wrote KING LEAR, MACBETH, and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. It was a...
Editing Shakespeare
09 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Just what exactly does it mean to edit the works of Shakespeare, particularly since we have no surviving manuscript copies? Why is it that new edition...
Shakespeare Not Stirred
26 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Shakespeare Not Stirred" is the creation of two English professors who combined their love of the cocktail hour and their love of Shakespeare to writ...
Great Shakespeareans
29 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
If you were to make a list of the people who have left an enduring imprint on how the world interprets, understands, and receives Shakespeare, who wou...
Shakespeare and The Tabard Inn
15 Jul 2015
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 Canterbury Tales? The ...
Shakespeare in Hong Kong
01 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Last thing he did, dear queen, He kissed—the last of many doubled kisses— This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart." ANTONY AND CLEOPAT...
Shakespeare on Film
17 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
For most of us, “seeing Shakespeare” means experiencing live actors in a theater. But for more than 100 years, Shakespeare’s words, plots, setti...
Shakespeare's France and Italy
20 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth, . . . Have stooped my neck under your injuries And sighed my English breath in foreign clouds" —RICHARD II...
Elizabethan Street Fighting
05 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th' olden time, Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been performed Too terrib...
Myths About Shakespeare
22 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"It is not so. Thou hast misspoke, misheard. Be well advised; tell o'er thy tale again. It cannot be; thou dost but say 'tis so." —KING JOHN (3.1.5–...
Recounting Shakespeare's Life
08 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Her father loved me, oft invited me, Still questioned me the story of my life From year to year—the battles, sieges, fortunes That I have passed. ...
Shakespeare in Black and White
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Our own voices with our own tongues" —CORIOLANUS (2.3.47) In one of two podcasts on Shakespeare and the African American experience, "Our Own Voic...
The Rarely Performed Shakespeare Plays
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"As jewels lose their glory if neglected, So princes their renowns if not respected." —PERICLES (2:2:12–13) Every year, theaters across the Unite...
A New First Folio Discovery
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"As truth's authentic author to be cited, 'As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse" —TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (3.2.182–183) Not long ago, the w...
Pronouncing English as Shakespeare Did
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue." —HAMLET (3:2:1–2) When Shakespeare wrote his lines, and acto...
Brave New Worlds: The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes it seems you can hear or see traces of Shakespeare just about anywhere on Earth. But how about around the planet Uranus, which had not even ...
Codes and Ciphers from the Renaissance to Today
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions..." —HAMLET (4.5.83) It's a striking comment that occurs late in this podcast—a...
When Romeo Was a Woman
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"I will assume thy part in some disguise And tell fair Hero I am Claudio" —MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING(1.1.316) The actress Charlotte Cushman was a thea...
Romeo and Juliet Through the Ages
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." —ROMEO AND JULIET(5.3.320) Though the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet ...
Music in Shakespeare
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song, That old and antique song we heard last night." —Twelfth Night (2.4.3) Rebecca Sheir, host of our Shake...
Artistic Directors Talk Shakespeare
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"And by that destiny to perform an act / Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come / In yours and my discharge." (The Tempest, 2.1.288) Shakes...
Shakespeare and Insane Asylums
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t." (Hamlet, 2.2.223) Plenty of people today consider Shakespeare a literary genius, a pillar of ...
Why Shakespeare's Stories Still Resonate
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"I prithee speak to me as to thy thinkings," (Othello, 3.3.152) How do Shakespeare's works, written so long ago, still speak to us today? Just as ac...
Shakespeare LOL: All Mirth and No Matter
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"I was born to speak all mirth and no matter." (Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1.323) Let's face it: Modern audiences sometimes go from roaring with laugh...
Shakespeare in Translation
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated!" (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3.1.120-121) What happens when Shakespeare’s work is translated ...
Punk Rock Shakespeare
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Here will we sit and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears" (The Merchant of Venice, 5.1.63-64) How can young people connect with Shakespeare?...
Shakespeare Outdoors
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Under the greenwood tree / Who loves to lie with me / And turn his merry note / Unto the sweet bird’s throat, / Come hither, come hither, come hith...
In Search of the Real Richard III
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"I, that am rudely stamped..." (Richard III, 1.1.16) Shakespeare not only talked about his own times; he also wrote history plays that showed us the ...
Actresses on Shakespeare
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players." (As You Like It, 2.7.146-147) In Shakespeare's time, only men appeared on sta...
The Robben Island Shakespeare
20 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
While Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on South Africa's Robben Island, one of the other political prisoners managed to retain a copy of Shakespeare's ...
Designing Shakespeare
25 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
“And I hope here is a play fitted.” —A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (1.2.63) There's an old Broadway saying (sometimes attributed to Richard Rodgers...
African Americans and Shakespeare
25 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
"Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom! Freedom, high-day, freedom!" —THE TEMPEST(2.2.192-193) In this second of two podcasts on Shakespeare and th...