Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Every artist needs inspiration. In this episode, we talk to Sir Jonathan Bate. His book How the Classics Made Shakespeare, published by Princeton University Press in 2019, explores the Greek and Roman authors, narratives, and ideas that suffuse Shakespeare’s works. He was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Sir Jonathan Bate is Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities at Arizona State University, and a senior research fellow at Oxford University, where he was formerly provost of Worcester College. Bate’s 1997 book, The Genius of Shakespeare was called “The best book about Shakespeare for a generation” by The Times of London. His newest book, Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World, was just published in 2020 by Yale University Press.

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 young poet named Will. Sandra Newman’s new novel The Heavens crosses genres. You could call it historical fiction, with its meticulously accurate 16th-century details. You could call it science fiction for its use of time travel and parallel worlds. It’s also a really good, sexy romance novel about Emilia Bassano, the woman who some believe was the inspiration for half of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Sandra Newman joined us recently to talk about what inspired this novel and what it tells us about love, mental illness, and the past, present, and future. Newman is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Sandra Newman is the author of four novels, including The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, Cake, and The Country of Ice Cream Star. Her latest, The Heavens, was published by Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, in 2019. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published

It’s quite a list: Hanged. Prison fever. Stabbed. Stabbed. Poisoned. Beheaded. Beheaded. “Malady of France.” Cannonball. Burnt. Bitten. Eaten. Mauled. Shakespeare wrote about a lot of things, but he really wrote a lot about death. Chemist and science communicator Dr. Kathryn Harkup’s new book is Death By Shakespeare. In it, she takes her readers through a fulsome exploration of death in the plays and provides plenty of grizzly explanations of just what causes it all. We talk to her about a some of those deaths, dying in Shakespeare’s world, and why gruesome deaths feature so prominently in stories from Shakespeare to CSI. Harkup is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Kathryn Harkup is a chemist, author, and science communicator. Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts (published in the US by Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020) is the third in her series of books joining popular fiction and science, which also includes A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie and Making the Monster: The Scienc

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 wisdom? This episode of Shakespeare Unlimited will be a little different. We sat down with the Folger’s director, Michael Witmore, and his predecessor in that office, Director Emerita Gail Kern Paster, to talk about the bits of Shakespeare that bring them solace. We also reached out to a few friends of the podcast and asked them to share a little Shakespeare with us. In the 52 minutes traffic of our episode, you’ll hear from Molly Booth, Ian Doescher, Lauren Gunderson, Keith Hamilton-Cobb, Derek Jacobi, Iqbal Khan, Fran Kranz, Ryan North, James Shapiro, Paul Werstine, Casey Wilder Mott, and Stephan Wolfert about the words they’ve been pondering in these troubling times. We hope you'll take some solace in those words too.  From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 28, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode,

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’ days, beweep our outcast states, and never admit impediments to the marriage of true minds. But it might surprise you to learn that in the past, the Sonnets didn’t have quite the same great reputation. We asked Roehampton University professor Jane Kingsley-Smith back to Shakespeare Unlimited for a second episode about the Sonnets’ tortuous history. The author of The Afterlife of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Kingsley-Smith tells us about periods in the 1600s and 1700s  when some readers thought the sonnets were inauthentic, or immoral, or just that they had too many puns. Finally, we pay a visit to the 1800s, when writers like William Wordsworth and Oscar Wilde salvaged the poems’ good name. Jane Kingsley-Smith is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Jane Kingsley-Smith is Deputy Head of the Department of English & Creative Writing at Roehampton University in Lo

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 book, This Is Shakespeare, she writes that Shakespeare’s plays are characterized by gaps—unknowable elements and unanswered questions that require us to insert our own readings. These gaps, opened up by history, dramatic from, and Shakespeare’s tendencies as a writer, mean that these plays are much less tied up, spelled out, or clear cut than we like to think. In this episode, Barbara Bogaev talks to Emma Smith about her book, and some specific gaps in Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. Dr. Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Faculty of English and a Fellow of Hertford College at Oxford University in England. Her new book, This Is Shakespeare, was published in the US by Pantheon, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in 2020. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published March 31, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Libra

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 favorite team, and—according James Shapiro—Shakespeare. Shapiro is an eminent Shakespeare scholar, who, like many Americans, has found himself confused and troubled lately by the divisions in our country. And as an eminent Shakespeare scholar, he looked to Shakespeare to respond to that confusion. In his new book, Shakespeare in a Divided America, Shapiro puts forward what he sees as a completely new and unique approach to American history. The book looks at times when our nation seemed at its most fragile and disconnected and tells those stories through their connections to Shakespeare. James Shapiro is the Larry Miller professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and the Shakespeare scholar in residence at New York's Public Theater. He has written several award-winning books on Shakespeare including A Year in the Life of William Shakespe

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 to scholar Michael Anderegg about Lincoln’s love of Shakespeare and the anecdotes that recount it. Why do these stories fascinate us? What can they tell us about Lincoln, and about Shakespeare’s place in the American story? Michael Anderegg is Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of North Dakota. He is the author of numerous books including Cinematic Shakespeare, and Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture. His book Lincoln and Shakespeare was published by the University Press of Kansas in 2015. Anderegg is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published March 3, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Welcome, My Tall Fellow,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lau

You probably know where Shakespeare got the ideas for his plays. The Histories come from Holinshed’s Chronicles. Caesar and other Roman plays depend on Plutarch’s Lives. The Comedy of Errors comes from Plautus’s Menaechmi. Troilus and Cressida borrows from the Illiad. The Winter’s Tale repackages Robert Greene’s Pandosto. But what if we told you that a number of his plays draw inspiration from folktales, versions of which exist not only in England, but all over the world? Charlotte Artese’s new book, Shakespeare and the Folktale, anthologizes some of the folktales that made their way into Shakespeare’s plays. For example, Lear includes elements of a story sometimes called “Love Like Salt,” part of a larger tradition of Cinderella stories. The Merchant of Venice plays out much like a Chilean folktale called “White Onion.” Wacky tales of twins predate not only Shakespeare, but also Plautus. We talk to Artese about some of these stories and about how she became interested in folklore’s influence on Shakespeare (

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 owners too. But what they meant was, in many ways, much different from what they mean today. In this episode we talk to two authors about how people read, acquired, and collected books in Shakespeare’s time. Stuart Kells is the author of Shakespeare’s Library (Counterpoint, 2019). It speculates on what books the Bard might have owned and tells some intriguing stories about people over the years who’ve claimed either to have found the library or to have owned pieces of it. Jason Scott-Warren’s book is Shakespeare’s First Reader (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), which dissects the library of Richard Stonley, an Elizabethan bureaucrat who was the first person we know of to buy a printed book written by Shakespeare—a copy of Venus and Adonis that Stonley picked up on June 12, 1593. Kells and Scott-Warren are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Stuart Kells is an Austr

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 about her newest book, The Afterlife of Shakespeare's Sonnets, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. The book is a social history of the sonnets’ reception, starting with a glowing 1598 review that it's likely practically no one ever read and travelling through over 400 years of readers adoring and abhorring Shakespeare’s 152 complicated poems. Dr. Jane Kingsley-Smith edited Love's Labor's Lost for the Norton Shakespeare Third Edition, and The Duchess of Malfi for Penguin in 2015. She is the author of Shakespeare's Drama in Exile (Palgrave, 2003), and Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Kingsley-Smith is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 21, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, "To Thee I Send This Writte

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 Shakespeare go from popular entertainment to freshman-year staple? Professor Joseph Haughey of Northwest Missouri State University takes us back to a time when educators didn’t take Shakespeare seriously and English wasn’t even a subject in school. Haughey’s research focuses on the evolution of the English curriculum in American schools, and, in particular, the role of Shakespeare in that evolution. He is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 7, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “O This Learning, What A Thing It Is!,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Paul Luke at VoiceTrax West in Studio City, California, and Patty Holley at public radio stat

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 Kingsley, Adrian Lester, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, and Patrick Stewart. His 1970 "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" is that among the play’s most lauded and best known productions. His 1968 book "The Empty Space," now an e-book from Nick Hern Books, is a classic of theater writing. Brook’s work is characterized by the search for new theatrical modes and artistic languages, and at 94, he continues searching. His newest work, "Why?", co-written and co-directed by longtime collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, opened in Paris in June, finished a run at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience in October, and will soon begin a tour of China, Italy, and Spain. A new book, "Playing by Ear: Reflections on Sound and Music," is also being published this year. Barbara Bogaev interviews the director about his remarkable career, his illustrious collaborators, and the big question:

Director Kenny Leon’s production of "Much Ado About Nothing" mesmerized audiences during last summer’s Shakespeare in the Park. Now, you can watch this exuberant, sassy, and political performance, starring "Orange is the New Black’s" Danielle Brooks, on PBS’s Great Performances. We talked to Kenny Leon about how he approaches a new production and how Shakespeare’s comedies speak to our present moment. Leon is the founding artistic director of True Colors Theatre Company and Artistic Director of Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre. In 2014, he won the Tony Award for Best Director for his revival of "A Raisin in the Sun." Leon’s recent film work includes Netflix’s "American Son" with Kerry Washington, which he also directed on Broadway. His memoir, "Take You Wherever You Go," was published by Grand Central in 2018. Kenny Leon is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the "Shakespeare Unlimited" podcast. Published November 26, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, "Let's Have a Dance," wa

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 modern Europe: emerging from mechanical seashells in elaborate court masques, dancing across tightropes, and on the stages of the European Continent. Clare McManus is a professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton in London. She is the author of Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court, 1590-1619 and is working on a manuscript titled Early Modern Women’s Performance and the Dramatic Canon. McManus is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published November 12, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “She Can Spin for Her Living,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical helped from Andrew Feliciano

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 context of his stories. Shakespeare’s  Pericles takes twists and turns that sometimes seem to make no sense at all. Haddon’s new novel, The Porpoise, reinterprets Pericles: the book is a crazy, imaginative ride that swings between continents, between reality and fantasy, and between the 21st and 17th centuries AD and the 5th century BC. It also works to right the “moral wrong” that begins Shakespeare’s play. Poet and novelist Mark Haddon’s other books include A Spot of Bother, The Red House, The Pier Falls and Other Stories. The Porpoise was published in the US by Doubleday in 2019. He was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published October 29, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “The Porpoise How He Bounced and Tumbled,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the asso

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 Manhattan. Reformers wondered how these new arrivals could be assimilated into American culture. Their solution? Give ‘em Shakespeare. But at the same time, these recent immigrants were staging Shakespeare’s plays themselves, in their own languages and adapted for their own cultures, sharing performance spaces and loaning one another costumes and props in a vibrant Lower East Side theater scene. We talk to Dr. Elisabeth Kinsley about her new book, Here in this Island We Arrived: Shakespeare and Belonging in Immigrant New York. In it, Kinsley, an associate Dean at Northwestern University, explores American national identity and cultural belonging through Shakespeare. Kinsley is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published October 15, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “We Being Stranger

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 Library of Philadelphia, once belonged to John Milton, author of Paradise Lost. The First Folio contains what experts now widely believe to be Milton’s notes on Shakespeare, in his own handwriting. Suddenly, we can read what one of the greatest English language poets was thinking as he engaged with Shakespeare’s plays. The connection was made by Cambridge University’s Jason Scott-Warren. Scott-Warren was reading an essay by Penn State’s Claire M.L. Bourne about this copy of the First Folio when the handwriting in the notes started to look familiar. Shortly afterward, Bourne got a direct message from Scott-Warren on Twitter: “Can I run something by you?” We talk to Bourne and Scott-Warren about what this discovery means, how technology (including Twitter) has changed their work, and what’s next. Dr. Claire M. L. Bourne is an assistant professor of English at Penn Sta

“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,” says director Iqbal Khan. Khan has directed at Shakespeare’s Globe, in the West End, and at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he staged Much Ado About Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Tartuffe, and Othello. We talked to Khan about race in Shakespeare’s plays, the math and physics degrees he almost got, and the importance of staging Shakespeare’s complexities and contradictions. Khan is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Folger's Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 17, 2019. ©Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Tell the Tale Anew,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical helped from Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Dom Boucher at The Sound Company in London.

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 sometimes, when it all comes together, a great opera can bring the essence of Shakespeare’s stories sharply into focus. We talk to Colleen Fay about the history of Shakespearean operas… and find out which ones work and which ones don’t. Fay is a former Library of Congress music librarian and was the founding head of the Performing Arts Library at The Kennedy Center. She’s a regular on DC's local public TV arts roundup Around Town and local public radio magazine show Metro Connection. Fay is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 3, 2019. ©Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Come, Sing,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical helped from Evan Marquart at Voice Trax