Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

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 sixth of all of the drama produced during that period. How do we make sense of a swiss-cheese history with more holes than cheese? The Lost Plays Database tries to fill in those holes. It’s an open-access forum for information about lost plays from England originally written and performed between 1570 and 1642. The database collects the little evidence that remains of the lost plays, like descriptions of performances, lists of titles, receipts, diaries, letters, or fragments of parts. David McInnis, an Associate Professor at Australia’s University of Melbourne and one of the founders of the Lost Plays Database, has collected some of his discoveries about lost plays, as well as the new theories they have spawned, in a new book, "Shakespeare and Lost Plays." We spoke with McInnis about a few favorite lost plays and how researching them is critical to understanding

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 filmmaker Andrew Buckley’s ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, was the only passenger on the Mayflower who had previously been to the Americas. Eleven years before the Mayflower landed in what is now Massachusetts, Hopkins sailed aboard the Sea Venture, a ship bound for Jamestown that was blown off-course by a hurricane and wrecked in Bermuda. Among Hopkins’s fellow passengers on the Sea Venture was William Strachey, a poet and playwright whose account of the ill-fated voyage may have inspired Shakespeare’s "The Tempest." Buckley’s new documentary, "Stephano: The True Story of Shakespeare’s Shipwreck," traces Hopkins’s travels in England and the Americas and links him to The Tempest’s drunken, mutinous butler, Stephano. We talk to Buckley about the documentary, walking in his great-grandfather’s footsteps, and what the story reveals about the early colonization of North America.

For generations, artists have been shaping and changing Shakespeare to fit their times. The best adaptations add specific textures of place and culture, or a fluidity of language that can take centuries-old work and make it brand new. Seattle Shakespeare Company is presenting one of those works: a Salvadoran-American adaptation of "Hamlet" called "house of sueños," by actor and playwright Meme García. In "house of sueños," sisters Rina and Amelia prepare to celebrate Mom’s marriage to their new Stepdad. But when Amelia tells her sister of the mysterious voice and shadowy figure she saw in the attic last night, it becomes clear that not all in this house is as it seems. García’s play is being released as a special five-episode series from the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Rough Magic podcast. You can listen to it through March 17 wherever you get your podcasts or on the company’s website, https://www.seattleshakespeare.org/houseofsuenos/. We talked to García about adapting Shakespeare, mental illness in H

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 a significant role in the blossoming of Black American arts and culture of the 1920s and '30s. Of course, because there’s little in the English-language theater untouched by Shakespeare, he was present in the Harlem Renaissance too. Banner Shakespeare productions included Orson Welles’s hit “Voodoo” "Macbeth," produced by the Federal Theater Project, and the "Midsummer"-inspired "Swingin’ the Dream," which was a Broadway flop despite the talents of musician Louis Armstrong and comedian Moms Mabley. We talk to Dr. Giles about how the artists and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance regarded the Bard. Plus, we visit the African Company of the 1820s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s to learn about more than a century of Black responses to Shakespeare. Freda Scott Giles is Associate Professor Emerita of Theater at the University of Georgia. She was a contribu

Dr. Naomi Miller’s novel "Imperfect Alchemist" is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: a poet, playwright, translator, scientist, and colleague of writers like Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Mary Wroth, John Donne, and Emilia Lanier Bassano. Her name was Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. We talk to Miller about how she imagined the lives and voices of these literary lights, as well as Shakespeare, in her book. Plus, she discusses female alchemists of Elizabethan England, Sidney’s friends and beneficiaries, and how class shapes her characters’ outlooks. Naomi Miller is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Naomi Miller is a professor of English, as well as the Study of Women and Gender, at Smith College. She has written and edited nine books about early modern women authors and their worlds. Her first novel, "Imperfect Alchemist," was published by Allison & Busby in 2020. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 2, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. A

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 out. Jon Snow, the illegitimate son, was a Richard III type, who would win the crown (and our hearts). But Daenerys Targaryen, as a kind of Henry VII, would defeat him in battle and win it back, restoring peace and order. Turns out he was wrong about all of that. But as Wilson kept watching, he began to appreciate the other ways "Game of Thrones" is similar to Shakespeare—like the way that both Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin’s stories translate the history of the Wars of the Roses into other popular genres. Jeff Wilson’s new book, "Shakespeare and 'Game of Thrones,'" explores some of the ways that Shakespeare influenced "Game of Thrones"… as well as some of the ways that "Game of Thrones" has begun to influence Shakespeare. Wilson is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson is a faculty member in the Writing Program at Harvard University, wher

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 Shakespeare’s time, new scientific discoveries and mathematical concepts were upending the way people looked at their world. Many of those new ideas found their ways into his plays. We speak with Dr. Natalie Elliot about how Shakespeare interpreted the scientific innovations of the early modern period in his art. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Natalie Elliot is a storyteller, science writer, and a member of the faculty at St. John’s College. Her essay “Shakespeare’s Worlds of Science” was published in the Winter 2018 edition of The New Atlantis. Elliot is currently working on two books: an exploration of Shakespeare's engagement with early modern science called "Shakespeare and the Theater of the Universe," and a comic novel about woolly mammoths called "Megafauna." From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 5, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Libra

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 roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly.” Hal is calling Falstaff is gross and overstuffed, but Tufts started to think that a roast Manningtree ox sounded actually pretty good. That role inspired the actor and cook to write a cookbook, "Fat Rascals: Dining at Shakespeare’s Table," a collection of over 150 recipes inspired by Shakespeare’s words and adapted from actual 16th- and 17th-century recipes. We hopped on Zoom and asked Tufts to tell us about the book and give us a remote cooking demonstration. He obliged by teaching our host, Barbara Bogaev, how to make a pork pasty inspired by Titus Andronicus and the mid-17th-century chef and author Robert May. Bon appétit! Award-winning actor John Tufts has performed at theaters across the country, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where he is a member of the Acting Company and performed in over 20 of

For most of the 1700s, Shakespeare was considered a very good playwright. But in the 1800s, and especially during the Victorian period, Shakespeare became a prophet. Ministers began drawing their lessons from his texts. Scholars wrote books about the scriptural resonances of his words—often while taking those words out of context. Shakespeare’s works, the Victorians believed, offered religious revelations. In his new book, "The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century," University of Washington Associate Professor of English Charles LaPorte examines this moment in literary and religious history. We invited him to join us on the podcast to tell us how people in the 19th century thought about Shakespeare, how the moment helped give rise to the “authorship controversy,” and how sometimes, even today, we read Shakespeare like the Victorians. LaPorte is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. "The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century" was published by Cambridge Univ

In his classes at Binghamton University, David Sterling Brown and his students examine Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of Critical Race Theory. You might have heard about Critical Race Theory lately: put simply, it’s a way of looking at society and culture that focuses on the intersections of race, law, and power. Ever since George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis outraged much of the nation, Critical Race Theory has taken on a new urgency for millions of Americans examining race, law and power with new eyes. Meanwhile, millions of other Americans, pointing to the realities of their own day-to-day lives, are basically saying: “I told you so.” What does it mean to read a play like Titus Andronicus with questions of race in mind? Brown, who has written extensively about that play, joins us on the podcast to discuss the ways that such a reading reveals an entire dimension of racial imagery and racial violence. We also talk about what it means for theaters and cultural institutions t

In March, theaters were beginning to cancel ongoing and upcoming productions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Glasgow-based actor Robert Myles had just lost a gig that would have taken him through April. He’d been chatting with his wife about what to do, and one night, he tweeted: "In response to #Covid_19, I'm going to set up an online #Shakespeare play-reading group via Zoom or similar. Once a week, evenings UK-time so US people can join during the day as well. We have to do what we can to stay connected and creative over this time. Anyone interested?" His tweet blew up, and that play-reading group became The Show Must Go Online. The hugely successful series, available for free on YouTube, is working through all of Shakespeare’s plays in the order in which they are believed to have been written. The Show Must Go Online creatively uses the everyday facts of life in a pandemic—living rooms, laptops, and, of course, Zoom—to bring actors from around the world together in innovative performances of S

Between 1348 and the early years of the 18th century, successive waves of the plague rolled across Europe, killing millions of people and affecting every aspect of life. Despite the plague’s enormous toll on early modern English life, Shakespeare’s plays refer to it only tangentially. Why is that? And what did people write about the plague in early modern England? Over the past 20 years, Rebecca Totaro has been collecting contemporary writing about the plague. She has written five books about its cultural impact. We asked her to join us for a conversation about what Shakespeare’s contemporaries wrote about the plague—and why, just as often, they turned away from it. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Rebecca Totaro is an associate dean and a professor of literature in the College of Arts & Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. She has written or edited five books: Meteorology and Physiology in Early Modern Culture; Representing the Plague in Early Modern England, which she wrote with Ernest B. G

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 Twist’s Nancy, she was acclaimed for her performances as Romeo and Hamlet. The newest book about Cushman’s life is Tana Wojczuk’s "Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity." Cushman’s life was radical indeed. She played Shakespeare’s leading men with an emotionality and vulnerability that took audiences by surprise, started a bohemian artists’ colony in Rome, and lived publicly as a queer woman. We invited Wojczuk to join us on the podcast to chat about Cushman’s life, loves, work, tragedies, swordsmanship, and more. Tana Wojczuk is a senior nonfiction editor at Guernica. She teaches writing at New York University. She has worked as an arts critic for Vice, Bomb Magazine, and Paste and as a columnist for Guernica. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Believer, Gulf Coast, Apogee,

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to theater in the United States. Broadway and regional theaters are dark, and Shakespeare festivals across the country have cancelled their seasons. So it wasn’t a surprise when The Public Theater decided, for the first time in 66 years, that they couldn’t offer free Shakespeare in Central Park. But what they did instead made one of their scheduled productions—"Richard II," directed by Saheem Ali—more accessible to more people than ever before. The Public joined forces with New York’s public radio station, WNYC. Together, they created something that hasn’t been done before: a four-night serialized program that combined a presentation of "Richard II" with expert analysis and stories from cast members to contextualize the play in these unusual times. Director Ali worked hand-in-hand with WNYC producers Emily Botein, Matt Collette, and Isaac Jones to overcome massive challenges, like having twenty-six actors appear from twenty-six different locations and getting it all

In the second of two episodes about Black Americans and Shakespeare, we talk with scholars Marvin MacAllister and Ayanna Thompson about the period between the end of the Civil War and the 1950s: from Reconstruction, through the period of Jim Crow segregation, and into the Civil Rights Era. We’ll take a look at landmark performances like Orson Welles’s 1936 all-Black Macbeth and Paul Robeson’s groundbreaking Othello. We’ll also hear a less familiar story that dramatizes the tensions surrounding Shakespeare in the Black American theater—one set at Washington, DC’s Howard University, where a young Toni Morrison played Queen Elizabeth in the university’s production of Richard III in the early 1950s. Ayanna Thompson is a Professor of English and the director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University. Marvin McAllister is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. They are interviewed by Rebecca Sheir. From the Shakespeare Unli

African American engagement with Shakespeare goes back a long way—maybe even farther than you'd imagine. And like so much else surrounding American race relations, African American performance of Shakespeare is inextricably linked to the experiences of slavery, freedom, Jim Crow segregation, and the battle for equal rights. In this episode, which we originally broadcast in 2015, we explore two periods in the long history of African American engagement with Shakespeare. One story begins in the 1820s, when freedom first came to the enslaved African Americans of New York. The other encompasses the long period of change stretching from the 1950s to today. We have help from five scholars of Shakespeare, race, and American History: - Kim Hall is a professor of English at Barnard College. - Caleen Sinnette Jennings is an actor, playwright, and professor of theater at American University in Washington, DC. - Bernth Lindfors is professor emeritus of history at the University of Texas. - Francesca Royster is a profes

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’Farrell’s new book "Hamnet" delves into his story and comes away with a lyrical and moving portrait of a family’s grief. The novel is focused not so much on William Shakespeare—in fact, O’Farrell never actually mentions his name in the book—as it is on his family back in Stratford, and how they cope with Hamnet’s tragic death. On this episode, we talk to Maggie O’Farrell about how the idea for "Hamnet" came to her, the way she imagines Shakespeare and his family, and what she learned in the process of writing the book. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Maggie O'Farrell is the author of eight novels: "After You'd Gone"; "My Lover's Lover"; "The Distance Between Us"; "The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox"; "The Hand That First Held Mine; Instructions for a Heatwave"; and "This Must Be the Place." Her latest, "Hamnet," was published in the US by Knopf in 2020. It has bee

No two theater directors approach Shakespeare’s plays in the same way. When it comes to setting, blocking, costuming, casting, and cutting, there are countless ways directors can shape Shakespeare to make his works their own. It’s with this sense of infinite possibility in mind that we invited two theater directors to join us for a conversation about how they approach Shakespeare. What goes in to directing one of Shakespeare’s plays? Where does a director start? What do directors think about as they kick off rehearsals? Laura Gordon is a Milwaukee-based freelance theater director. She has directed at theaters including Utah State University, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, and the American Players Theatre. Vivienne Benesch is the Artistic Director of PlayMakers Rep at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She has directed at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, the Chautauqua Theater Company and Conservatory, The Juilliard School, an

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 supported by booksellers, who make their livelihoods poring through collections of books and ephemera and bringing those items to the people who want them. "The Booksellers," a new documentary directed by D.W. Young, explores the New York rare book world in all its depth, breadth, history, and quirkiness. In it, you’ll meet Syreeta Gates, who is preserving the artifacts of ‘80s and ‘90s hip-hop; Caroline Schimmel, a pioneering collecting of women’s writing; Jay Walker, the collector behind the Museum of the History of Human Imagination; Michael Zinman, who sought out “damaged” books at a time before other booksellers understood their real value; and many other passionate booklovers. We talked to D.W. Young to learn more about the present state of this community and to find out where it goes from here. Young is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. D.W. Young’s films

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 was a shareholder—like Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, or Robert Armin. But who were their co-stars? How were they cast? And what was it like to watch their performances? In this episode, we talk to Dr. Lucy Munro, author of the latest book in Bloomsbury’s Shakespeare in the Theatre series, The King’s Men. By exploring theatrical contracts, the handful of existing cast lists, and what there is of 16th- and early 17th-century theater criticism, the book gives us a peek into the inner workings of the company that brought Shakespeare’s plays to life for the first time. Munro is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Lucy Munro is a lecturer in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at King's College London. She is the author of Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory, published by Cambridge University Press in 2005, and Archaic Style in English Literature, 159