Esther French

This Marlon Brando costume is on display with the First Folio exhibition at Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, IL. From a Hot Pepper Shakespeare contest to a Romeo and Juliet masquerade ball, the party doesn’t stop. These First Folio…

Abraham Lincoln. Copyright 1894 by H.W. Fay. Folger Shakespeare Library. Growing up on the frontier, Abraham Lincoln had few books to read in his early days—but among them were the works of Shakespeare, which Lincoln cherished throughout his life. The…

Whether you’re giving a valentine to a sweetheart or a friend, why not say it with Shakespeare? We have a new set of beautifully illustrated Shakespeare valentines for you, just in time for Valentine’s Day. You can view the complete…

The diary of physician and vicar John Ward contains the only known account of Shakespeare’s death. On March 6, 1662/63 he writes, “Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died…

Over the course of 2016, the Folger Shakespeare Library is sending a First Folio to all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. Each month we’ll be checking in on the progress of this traveling exhibition, First Folio! The Book that Gave…

How did you first encounter Shakespeare? Was it in a classroom or a theater? How old were you? Was it love at first sight, or did it take you some time to warm up to the Bard? Did any particular lines or…

Laura Wayth confesses that she’s never read any of Shakespeare’s plays. But she’s listened to the plays performed over and over, and it’s her keen ear that informs her advice to actors in this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited. Wayth is…

Barry Kraft as Lear in King Lear, produced by Southern Oregon University, Oregon Center for the Arts. (Credit: Prechtel photo) What can we learn from Shakespeare’s revisions to his plays, and what does that mean for the actors and directors…

l-r: Rex Daugherty (Tybalt), Aaron Bliden (Benvolio), and Brad Koed (Mercutio) in Romeo and Juliet, directed by Aaron Posner, Folger Theatre (2013). Photo by Teresa Wood. We covered a lot in our podcast about Shakespeare this year, from the popular…

A late eighteenth-century Shakespeare art museum is experiencing a second life as a detailed online re-creation, the brainchild of University of Texas English professor Janine Barchas.  John Boydell, a British publisher, commissioned depictions of Shakespeare scenes from well-known artists of the day: Joshua…

Katherine Duncan-Jones. Photo by Teresa Wood. Every few years it seems, a newly discovered portrait of Shakespeare emerges, only to be discredited by scholars after the obligatory media maelstrom. Many observers have noted that the cyclical nature of these announcements…

Luke Skywalker strikes an iconic Hamlet pose in this illustration from the William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series. Credit Nicolas Delort. Courtesy Quirk Books. Shakespeare and Star Wars would appear to have very little in common. Or at least they did,…