The Folger Spotlight

Folger Dramaturg Michele Osherow. There’s a fascination with dreams in Shakespeare, though Midsummer is the only play to announce one in its title. What’s odd is that aside from Hermia’s unnerving vision in the forest, no dreams are dreamt. Instead,…

Purchase a Folger edition of Midsummer at the Gift Shop. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, residents of Athens mix with fairies from a local forest, with comic results. In the city, Theseus, Duke of Athens, is to marry Hippolyta, Queen…

The nautical tale of a wandering prince, Pericles is narrated by John Gower, a poet from the English past. Gower explains that Pericles, Prince of Tyre, hopes to win the hand of a princess in Antioch. When Pericles learns that…

Marina Singing Before Pericles, 1825. Pericles is a play haunted by loss. Sometimes loss is figured as a sudden and calamitous separation from one’s friends and belongings, as when Pericles at the top of the second act is washed ashore…

Pericles Director Joseph Haj Pericles was wildly popular during Shakespeare’s lifetime and in the decades following; indeed, it was among his most popular works. It was the play that reopened the London Globe Theatre in 1631 after it was shuttered…

Folger Resident Dramaturg, Michele Osherow Pericles, Prince of Tyre is unusual among Shakespeare’s plays. The hero travels Odysseus-like from place to place on a fantastical quest to showcase honor, announce virtue, and dodge the fury of a perverse king. Pericles…

Images from Pericles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 Author James Shapiro’s new book The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 considers the period when the playwright wrote three of his greatest tragedies, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Dr. Shapiro…