Shakespeare & Beyond

Every month, we share a snapshot of Shakespeare in performance around America. See what’s on this April.

Known for his complex imaginary contraptions, W. Heath Robinson also produced exquisite illustrations for editions of Shakespeare’s works.

Francine Segan, a food historian with a taste for the Renaissance, adapts a 1610 handwritten recipe for rose cakes from a recipe book that’s part of the Folger collection.

Henry Altemus’ magnificently miniature copy of “The Children’s Shakespeare” by Edith Nesbit is the Folger’s smallest Shakespeare edition. The title page’s portrait of Shakespeare is only six millimeters long. Like the book’s text, it is not discernible to the naked…

Shakespeare characters love talking about their ducats, which were commonly used coins in Shakespeare’s day. Can you match the money quote to the play it comes from?

While Shakespeare musicals borrowed plots, characters, and situations from England’s best-known poet, they remained essentially “American.”

Born Ada Crehan in Limerick, Ireland, Ada Rehan arrived in Brooklyn with her family at age five. Her big break came in the late 1870s, when theater manager Augustin Daly hired her for his New York company.

Two brothers living in England in 1595 have had their playwriting careers upended by the arrival of a new guy from Stratford upon Avon, William Shakespeare. That’s the plot of Something Rotten, a new musical that opened on Broadway in…

Lady Mary Wroth watched Shakespeare act in his own plays, heard her relative Sir Walter Raleigh talk about founding Virginia, and almost certainly met Pocahantas and ambassadors from Morocco. Wroth’s later prose fiction echoes elements of her own life, including…

This blog post spotlights five female artists whose interpretations of Shakespeare’s works are part of the Folger collection. We decided to highlight three sculptors and two book artists.

Paul Robeson was the first modern African American to perform Shakespeare—to perform Othello, and he talks in his letters and in his essays about bringing his experiences as a student in a white arena, his experiences with racism, to the…

A 1957 Taming of the Shrew with beautiful lithographs. Song lyrics from 1769 extolling the goblet carved from a mulberry tree supposedly planted by Shakespeare. These and other recent additions to the Folger Shakespeare Library collection will be up for…