Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
262 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★★ - 761 ratingsHome to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare materials. Advancing knowledge and the arts. Discover it all at www.folger.edu. Shakespeare turns up in the most interesting places—not just literature and the stage, but science and social history as well. Our "Shakespeare Unlimited" podcast explores the fascinating and varied connections between Shakespeare, his works, and the world around us.
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Episodes
Shakespeare and YA Novels
November 29, 2016 20:00 - 31 minutes - 36.2 MBWhile print sales of adult fiction are down in the last decade, the juvenile market – which includes young adult literature or "YA" – has actually gone up 40 percent. In this episode, two YA authors talk about their writing, their audience, their inspirations, and the role that Shakespeare plays in all of it. Molly Booth’s first novel, "Saving Hamlet," was published in 2016 by Disney-Hyperion. It tells the story of an American teenager who time-travels back to Shakespeare’s Globe during the ...
Stephen Greenblatt on Shakespeare's Life Stories
November 15, 2016 19:45 - 28 minutes - 32.7 MBThere 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’s dying words to Horatio: “And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story.”) While that may not seem surprising on the face of it – Shakespeare was a storyteller after all – this idea of re-imagining your life so that it tells a story was not a common one in Shakespeare’s time. In this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited, Harvar...
Shakespeare and Girlhood
November 01, 2016 18:46 - 27 minutes - 31.2 MBHow does Shakespeare portray girls and girlhood in his plays, and what do those portrayals tell us about life in Elizabethan and Jacobean England? Our guest for this Shakespeare Unlimited episode, Deanne Williams of York University in Toronto, is the author of Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood, published in 2014. She is interviewed by Neva Grant. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published November 1, 2016. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcas...
Shakespeare in Sign Language
October 18, 2016 19:09 - 27 minutes - 31 MBGallaudet University in Washington, DC, is the world’s only university designed to be barrier-free for deaf and hard of hearing students. For more than 150 years, its students have been performing Shakespeare without spoken words. This month, the Folger Shakespeare Library’s nationwide First Folio tour stops at Gallaudet, which also has a companion exhibition called “First Folio: Eyes on Shakespeare,” curated by Jill Bradbury, a Gallaudet English professor. In this podcast she takes us on a t...
Shakespeare in Solitary
October 04, 2016 14:12 - 32 minutes - 37.7 MBFor ten years, Laura Bates, a professor at Indiana State University, taught Shakespeare to a group of inmates considered the worst of the worst – men incarcerated in the solitary confinement unit at Indiana’s Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. These are, for the most part, prisoners considered so dangerous they were kept apart, even from the other prisoners. Every week, Professor Bates would drive out to the prison, make her way over to solitary confinement and sit down in a space in betwe...
Anecdotal Shakespeare
September 20, 2016 14:01 - 30 minutes - 34.8 MBThe curses associated with the Scottish play. Using a real skull for the Yorick scene in "Hamlet." Over the centuries, these and other fascinating theatrical anecdotes have attached themselves to the plays of William Shakespeare. Many of these stories have been told and re-told, over and over, century after century – with each new generation inserting the names of new actors into the story and telling the story as if it just occurred. So “One night David Garrick was backstage” becomes, “So ...
How Shakespeare's First Folio Became a Star
September 06, 2016 14:10 - 32 minutes - 37.3 MBToday, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s works, printed in 1623, can sell for millions of dollars. But the First Folio wasn’t always valued so highly. In this podcast episode, two experts in the First Folio and the book trade, Adam Hooks and Dan De Simone, chart the rise of the First Folio—how and when this book became a cultural icon with such a dizzying price tag. Adam Hooks is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Iowa and author of “Selling S...
Elizabethan Medicine
August 23, 2016 13:55 - 28 minutes - 33 MBBeing 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 purgation to take the bad humors out of your body. They might draw blood from your ankle or your arm. But while these prescriptions seem laughable today, elements of the thinking they were based on have come all the way down to us in the 21st century. That thinking, though it might seem unrelated to Shakespeare's stories, is surprisingly present in...
American Moor
August 09, 2016 15:22 - 25 minutes - 28.6 MB"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? Who’s “allowed” to? What if a white director and the actor he’s cast as Othello simply do not see eye-to-eye on the play’s subtext, the Moor’s motivations, and what the audience is supposed to take away from the production? That conflict is at the heart of a one-man show currently being performed around the country called "American Moor."...
The Food of Shakespeare's World
July 26, 2016 15:08 - 28 minutes - 33 MBThis episode shifts slightly from our usual intense focus on Shakespeare. Instead, we are talking about the world that he inhabited, or at least a small part of that world: the kitchen. Kitchens, and what goes on in them, come up in Shakespeare’s plays with surprising frequency, whether directly or, more often, obliquely. Our guest is Wendy Wall, an English professor at Northwestern University and director of the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. Her 2015 book Recipes for Thought: Knowle...
Recreating the Boydell Gallery
July 12, 2016 13:17 - 29 minutes - 33.7 MBIn the decades after Shakespeare's death, his works temporarily fell out of favor. His renaissance is usually credited to actor-manager David Garrick, who staged a Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769. Riding Garrick's coattails, an artistic entrepreneur named John Boydell later opened one of England's first art galleries, devoted to paintings of scenes from Shakespeare plays. The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery has now been recreated online. Our guest is Janine Barchas, an English professor at the Unive...
Worlds Elsewhere
June 29, 2016 15:03 - 26 minutes - 30.5 MBIn 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, China and all across the United States. He chronicled his travels in a book titled "Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe" that was published in 2015. He explains now what the play was that set him off on this journey, and just what it was he was hoping to find. Andrew is interviewed by Neva Grant. From the Shakespeare Unlimi...
Othello and Blackface
June 14, 2016 19:10 - 34 minutes - 40 MBThis podcast episode, which deals with race, Othello, and how the Elizabethans portrayed blackness onstage, offers a startling, new interpretation of Desdemona’s handkerchief that is changing the way scholars understand the play. Our guests are Ayanna Thompson, Professor of English at George Washington University and a Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America, and Ian Smith, Professor of English at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. They are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. ...
Shakespeare and Religion
May 31, 2016 20:54 - 26 minutes - 30.3 MBThe period when Shakespeare was writing was one torn by disagreements over the proper method of observing Christianity in England. Protestantism was at war with Catholicism and the Church of England often employed coercion and even violence to enforce its hegemony. The way Shakespeare handled these divisions is the topic of this podcast episode, "There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Than Are Dreamt Of In Your Philosophy." Our guest is David Scott Kastan, George M. Bodman Professor of...
Shakespeare in Africa
May 17, 2016 20:26 - 33 minutes - 38.6 MBWhen the British came to colonize the African continent in the middle of the 1800s, they brought Shakespeare with them. But after the British left power, it was often Shakespeare who leaders in African countries summoned to push back against the colonial experience — using his words to promote unity, elevate native languages, and critique the politics of the time. Barbara Bogaev interviews Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre at the University of Leeds and co-editor of “African Theatre...
Creation of the First Folio
May 03, 2016 18:52 - 28 minutes - 32.8 MBWe likely wouldn’t have half of Shakespeare’s plays without the First Folio of 1623. Imagine a world without "Macbeth," "Twelfth Night," or "Julius Caesar." Our guest on this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited is Emma Smith, a professor of Shakespeare studies at Oxford and the author of “The Making of the First Folio.” In her book, she offers an intimate, step-by-step examination of how the First Folio was conceived, how Shakespeare’s plays were gathered, how the rights for them were obtained, ...
Kill Shakespeare Comics
April 20, 2016 15:05 - 29 minutes - 33.4 MBImagine a comic book series in which Shakespeare’s most popular characters team up in rival, warring camps bent on seizing control of the kingdom that is the world of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s called “Kill Shakespeare,” and Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col have been publishing the series since 2010. Barbara Bogaev interviewed the authors while they were at Comic-Con in New York in 2015 for the release of their new book — a volume that combines all the “Kill Shakespeare” comics in a single ...
Reduced Shakespeare Company
April 05, 2016 17:50 - 25 minutes - 29.2 MBDiscovered 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 young William Shakespeare from Stratford. That’s the premise of the latest work from the Reduced Shakespeare Company, “William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (Abridged),” which premieres at Folger Theatre in April 2016. The comedy troupe’s current directors are also its longest-serving performers, Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin. Barbara B...
Inside the Folger Conservation Lab
March 22, 2016 18:12 - 30 minutes - 34.9 MBThe 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, eighteen of these rare books are traveling the country throughout 2016 in the “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare” exhibition. But before they hit the road, each First Folio received a little TLC from Folger conservators up on the third floor. In this podcast episode, Renate Mesmer takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of ...
Shakespeare and Magic
March 08, 2016 22:37 - 32 minutes - 36.9 MBIn 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 spirits. Is this magic for real, or is Prospero pulling off elaborate illusions? Fascinated by this question and by Prospero’s relinquishing of magic at the play’s end, Teller (of the magic/comedy team Penn & Teller) co-directed a production of THE TEMPEST with Aaron Posner at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2015. In this episode of Shakespeare Un...
Shakespeare and World Cinema
February 23, 2016 21:16 - 35 minutes - 40.3 MBShakespeare, of course, is not just performed in English, and his work is not just acted on stage. Foreign-language adaptations of Shakespeare on film have a tradition that goes back as long as talking pictures have existed. For the past 20 years, these films have been the career focus of Mark Thornton Burnett, our guest on this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited. Mark Thornton Burnett is a professor of English at Queen’s University Belfast and the author of "Shakespeare and World Cinema." ...
Pop Sonnets
February 10, 2016 16:02 - 23 minutes - 26.9 MBThere’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 culture. Our guest on this podcast episode is Erik Didriksen, who takes hit songs from artists like Taylor Swift and Coldplay and rewrites them as Elizabethan-style sonnets. The Tumblr where Didriksen has posted these sonnets has become so popular that he's published a book, "Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs." He was inte...
Shakespeare In India
January 27, 2016 18:40 - 15 minutes - 18.2 MBWhat impact has Shakespeare’s writing had on Indian theater? And, how has Indian theater shaped and altered Shakespeare’s work? Shakespeare’s interaction with India came, of course, in the context of India’s experience with British colonization and colonialism. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I gave a charter to the East India Company to trade with the Shahs, emperors and Maratha princes who’d ruled the subcontinent for the previous century. Over the 150 years that followed, the East India Compan...
Auditioning for Shakespeare
January 12, 2016 21:04 - 30 minutes - 34.8 MBLaura Wayth, our guest for this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited, is Assistant Professor of Theatre at San Francisco State University and the author of a “how-to” book called "The Shakespeare Audition: How to Get Over Your Fear, Find the Right Piece, and Have a Great Audition." Wayth was interviewed by Neva Grant, and she was joined by actors Stephanie Ann Foster, Mike Ryan, and Bruce Avery. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. © January 12, 2016. Folger Shakespeare Library. All r...
Shakespeare Portraits
December 15, 2015 21:43 - 24 minutes - 27.9 MBThere’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 imagine that you have a pretty good idea of what Shakespeare looked like. Oxford University professor Katherine Duncan-Jones has written a book that invites you to question your assumptions and – maybe – take a new look. As you’ll hear, there really are only a few likenesses of Shakespeare where we’re pretty sure we know that the face in the image is hi...
Shakespeare's Star Wars
December 01, 2015 20:59 - 23 minutes - 26.5 MBShakespeare adaptations are a proud tradition. Prokofiev turned ROMEO AND JULIET into a ballet. Verdi turned MACBETH and OTHELLO into operas, and THE TAMING OF THE SHREW and TWELFTH NIGHT have been converted by Hollywood into teen comedies. But there’s a different type of Shakespeare adaptation that’s a lot harder to get right – that’s when someone takes an existing piece of popular entertainment and reimagines it as if it might have been written by Shakespeare. As Ian Doescher can tell...
Andrea Mays: The Millionaire and the Bard
November 18, 2015 18:29 - 28 minutes - 32.1 MBHenry 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. In this episode, economist and author Andrea Mays talks with Neva Grant about some of the fascinating financial and personal details of Folger's life, and in particular, how he went about collecting all these books. Folger, of course, did not limit himself to First Folios. He also, together with his wife Emily Jordan Folger, assembled the world’...
Shakespeare in the Caribbean
November 04, 2015 15:09 - 28 minutes - 32.9 MBShakespeare and his plays are woven deeply into the culture of the Caribbean, both white and black. Even after centuries of British colonial rule came to an end, Shakespeare endured, as we hear in this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited. There’s a long tradition in the British Caribbean of using Shakespeare quotations in competitions to demonstrate rhetorical skill, whether in the schoolyard or at rural village gatherings. After slavery was abolished in the British colonies, schools were est...
Stanley Wells on Great Shakespeare Actors
October 21, 2015 14:57 - 23 minutes - 26.8 MBFor the majority of audience members, Shakespeare is brought to life by the actors and actresses who speak his lines. Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells considered all of the most outstanding Shakespeare performers, from past to present, and essentially created his own personal Hall of Fame. He’s written about these artists in a book called "Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh." Wells sifted through firsthand accounts from those who saw these great performers on stage to get a s...
Music for Shakespeare's Lyrics
October 07, 2015 14:39 - 31 minutes - 35.6 MBThe majority of Shakespeare’s plays call for singing — sometimes it’s part of the action, sometimes it seems to spring out of nowhere. And while the lyrics to the songs appear to have always been a part of the text, the musical notes for those lyrics have been lost over the years. Over four centuries of staging Shakespeare, directors have explored different approaches to filling in these musical gaps. David Lindley, professor emeritus of literature and music at the University of Leeds, is...
The Year of Lear
September 23, 2015 13:13 - 29 minutes - 33.2 MB1606 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 also a time in which the king of England, James I, faced internal political challenges that threatened to tear the nation apart. James Shapiro is our guest for this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited. His new book, THE YEAR OF LEAR, examines how the events of 1606 touched Shakespeare’s life and whether they are reflected in his work. James Shapiro ...
Editing Shakespeare
September 09, 2015 18:25 - 31 minutes - 35.9 MBJust what exactly does it mean to edit the works of Shakespeare, particularly since we have no surviving manuscript copies? Why is it that new editions of the plays continue to be published? In this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited, Rebecca Sheir interviews Paul Werstine and Suzanne Gossett about the how and why of editing Shakespeare. Since 1989, Paul Werstine has been the co-editor of the Folger Editions, along with Barbara Mowat. He’s also a professor of English at King’s University Coll...
Shakespeare Not Stirred
August 26, 2015 14:36 - 25 minutes - 29.6 MB"Shakespeare Not Stirred" is the creation of two English professors who combined their love of the cocktail hour and their love of Shakespeare to write a collection of Bard-inspired cocktail and hors d’oeuvre recipes. This thoroughly modern book (released September 1, 2015) contains instructions for concocting drinks like “Kate’s Shrew-driver” and “Othello’s Green-eyed Monster.” The images of Shakespeare characters that accompany the recipes are all taken from the Folger Shakespeare Librar...
Great Shakespeareans
July 29, 2015 14:52 - 21 minutes - 24.8 MBIf 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 would you choose? About a decade ago, Peter Holland, the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies at Notre Dame, and Adrian Poole, the former Chair in English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, set out to create a compendium that summed up the work of these influential people. They chose performers, scholars, writers, critics, theater dir...
Shakespeare and The Tabard Inn
July 15, 2015 13:48 - 19 minutes - 22 MBWhat 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 intriguing possibility of such a link between these two great English writers stems from an anecdote found in a little-known manuscript. Unfortunately, The Tabard Inn burned down in the great Southwark fire of 1676, so there’s no way of knowing the truth for sure. But the Shakespeare graffiti story grabs our imagination even if it was only hear-...
Shakespeare in Hong Kong
July 01, 2015 14:32 - 24 minutes - 27.8 MB"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 CLEOPATRA (1.5.45-48) Hong Kong, a former British colony, has been staging and teaching Shakespeare plays for nearly 150 years. In this episode from our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, we see how Shakespeare is stretched to tell a story of contemporary Hong Kong and colonialism in two important adaptations of ROMEO AND JULIET—"Crocodile River" and "Young L...
Shakespeare on Film
June 17, 2015 17:32 - 23 minutes - 26.9 MBFor most of us, “seeing Shakespeare” means experiencing live actors in a theater. But for more than 100 years, Shakespeare’s words, plots, settings and characters have also been brought to life on film. Shakespeare on film has never been like Shakespeare on stage. In the earliest years of the medium, it simply couldn’t be. Then, as film matured, directors realized that the medium offered new ways to tells Shakespeare’s stories that were impossible to reproduce on stage. Along the way, t...
Shakespeare's France and Italy
May 20, 2015 14:30 - 22 minutes - 25.7 MB"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 (3.1.16, 19–20) Shakespeare's plays are well stocked with merchants of Venice, gentlemen of Verona, lords and ladies of France, and other foreign characters. But what did he—and his audiences—really know about such distant places and people? In this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited, Rebecca Sheir poses that question about France and Italy—the t...
Elizabethan Street Fighting
May 05, 2015 14:22 - 30 minutes - 34.7 MB"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 terrible for the ear." —MACBETH(3.4.91–94) From the duels in ROMEO AND JULIET to a brutal mob in JULIUS CAESAR, street fighting transforms several of Shakespeare's plays. How much, though, does it reflect (or differ from) the mean streets of his day? Rebecca Sheir talks violence in Elizabethan times with Vanessa McMahon, author of "Murder in Shakesp...
Myths About Shakespeare
April 22, 2015 14:53 - 25 minutes - 29.2 MB"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 (3.1.5–7) 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 luck to say the name of “the Scottish play” or that Shakespeare hated his wife. Are any of these stories true? And whether they are or not, what do they tell us about previous eras, and our own? Re...
Recounting Shakespeare's Life
April 08, 2015 15:38 - 28 minutes - 32.6 MBHer 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. —Othello (1.3.149–152) What do we know about Shakespeare's life? The answer: Not as much as we would like to. As much or as little, in other words, as we would about any middle-class Englishman of his time. This episode of Shakespeare Unlimited considers not only that question, but two others: During the past four centuries, when and how did b...
Shakespeare in Black and White
March 20, 2015 19:14 - 30 minutes - 28.4 MB"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 Voices with Our Own Tongues" revisits the era when Jim Crow segregation was at its height, from a few years after the end of the Civil War to the 1940s and 1950s. Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks about black Americans and Shakespeare in that time with two scholars of the period, Marvin MacAllister and Ayanna Thompson. T...
The Rarely Performed Shakespeare Plays
March 20, 2015 19:10 - 28 minutes - 26 MB"As jewels lose their glory if neglected, So princes their renowns if not respected." —PERICLES (2:2:12–13) Every year, theaters across the United States and the world treat us to Shakespeare—which usually means such frequently produced plays as HAMLET, MACBETH, and ROMEO AND JULIET. Some Shakespeare plays, however, are rarely performed today. Why is that, was this always the case, and what is it like to stage those plays now? Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks w...
A New First Folio Discovery
March 20, 2015 19:06 - 20 minutes - 23.5 MB"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 world learned of a remarkable discovery: An old book in a French library, acquired in the 1790s, was identified as an unknown copy of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare—the first collection of Shakespeare's plays. Before this find, there were 232 known First Folios in the entire world. Now, there are 233. Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unli...
Pronouncing English as Shakespeare Did
March 20, 2015 19:02 - 28 minutes - 26.2 MB"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 actors first spoke them, how did they say the words—and what does that tell us? Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks "original pronunciation" (OP) with Shakespearean actor Ben Crystal and his father, linguist David Crystal, one of the world's foremost researchers on how English was spoken in Shakespeare's time. Filled with li...
Brave New Worlds: The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus
March 20, 2015 18:48 - 40 minutes - 37 MBSometimes 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 been discovered in Shakespeare's time? In this celestial edition, Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series, traces the quirky, fascinating, and little-known tale of the 27 known moons of Uranus—nearly all of which have Shakespearean names. Through the voices of historians, actors, and modern scientists, "Brave New Worlds...
Codes and Ciphers from the Renaissance to Today
March 20, 2015 18:45 - 14 minutes - 16.4 MB"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—and by the time you hear it, you may well agree: "Without Bacon and Shakespeare, we might not have won the war in the Pacific," says Bill Sherman, head of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum and professor of Renaissance studies at the University of York. Rebecca Sheir, host of our Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks with Sherman about the flo...
When Romeo Was a Woman
March 20, 2015 18:42 - 29 minutes - 33.4 MB"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 theatrical icon in 19th century America, known to the press by her first name, like Beyonce today. Her fame was not, however, for conventionally Victorian feminine portrayals. Cushman specialized in playing male roles, principally Romeo and Hamlet, competing on equal terms with leading actors like Edwin Forrest and Edwin Booth. She was not the only a...
Romeo and Juliet Through the Ages
March 20, 2015 18:39 - 31 minutes - 35.7 MB"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 is a perennial favorite, the world around the play has changed in the four centuries since it was first performed. Shifting attitudes about taboo love and marriage, gender roles, and even guns and street violence inform the way we read or see the play today. Rebecca Sheir, host of our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series, talks with theater schol...
Music in Shakespeare
March 20, 2015 18:35 - 20 minutes - 24 MB"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 Shakespeare Unlimited series, interviews Ross W. Duffin, professor at Case Western University, about musical hints in Shakespeare that have been flying over the heads of most audiences and readers for 400 years. Duffin is the author of the award-winning "Shakespeare's Songbook" (2004), a title that only suggests the book's broader story. Duffin includ...