Shakespeare & Beyond

As anyone who has read Shakespeare’s plays can attest, their content is not always very appropriate for children: brutal murders, bawdy jokes, incest, etc. Editions of Shakespeare’s plays that have been designed specifically for children often omit or smooth over…

While working on a dual biography of Brunhild and Fredegund, Shelley Puhak stumbled across a connection between these medieval queens and Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s comedies and romances are full of lovers. See if you can match each pair of lovers with the Shakespeare play in which they appear.

Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe may not be as famous as his contemporary William Shakespeare, but his death at age 29 was far more dramatic — an argument over a bill that led to a stabbing, with the killer successfully pleading…

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, much of the comedic conflict derives from the application of the nectar of a magic flower. Under its influence, the queen of the fairies (Titania) becomes enamored of a donkey, and, through a bit…

Charles Cattermole. A scene from The Merchant of Venice. 19th century. Folger ART Box C368.5 no.1 (size S) Italy is the setting most associated with Shakespeare’s comedies, providing layers of dramatic potential that Kent Cartwright explores in an excerpt from…

Folger ART File R667.3 no.7 copy 1 PHOTO (size S) Shakespeare’s plays are full of brothers and sisters. Test your knowledge by seeing if you can correctly identify these characters’ siblings. Siblings in Shakespeare’s Plays Shakespeare’s plays are full of…

Calling all book lovers! Some of our most popular #FolgerFinds posts on Instagram this year featured beautiful bindings of Shakespeare’s collected works or early editions of Shakespeare plays that may have slightly different plot elements than the versions we’ve come…

What were the most popular stories this year on the Shakespeare & Beyond blog? Posts about love, coffee, and Ian McKellen made the top five.

Our top Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes from 2021 explore the British royal family, a Shakespeare-inspired novel, lost plays, and more. Happy listening! How We Hear Shakespeare’s Plays, with Carla Della Gatta In Shakespeare’s time, people talked about going to hear…

Picking up where Shakespeare’s King Lear ends, a new novel imagines the life of Lear’s wife, who in this telling has been banished for 15 years when she receives word of her family members’ deaths. Learwife by J.R. Thorp gives…

Duke Ellington includes “musical sonnets” in his 12-song Shakespeare jazz suite, Such Sweet Thunder. Learn more about this 1957 milestone in the story of jazz and Shakespeare from an interview with Douglas Lanier.