Shakespeare & Beyond

Victorian director Henry Irving’s use of a Black page in his production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ shows how forms of race-thinking had been sustained and intensified in the English theatrical imagination.

Elizabeth Boyd, a forgotten 18th-century playwright, probably played an important role in the idea for the monument of Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey.

A spectacular 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of “Macbeth” in New York City employed hundreds of black actors and theater technicians. It was financed by the Federal Theatre Project, a controversial part of the federal government’s New Deal programs to…

Check out innovative online plays and programs in February from the members of the Folger’s Shakespeare Theater Partnership Program.

“Its sense of empathy for the gendered position—and the pains and difficulties that accompany it on both sides—is at the heart of its comic warmth,” writes Paula Marantz Cohen about Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” in this excerpt from her…

Sonnet 116 is one of Shakespeare’s most famous love sonnets. Take our quiz to see if you can put the lines of the sonnet in the correct order.

The word “love” appears 2,146 times in Shakespeare’s collected works (including a handful of “loves” and “loved”). Add to that 59 instances of “beloved” and 133 uses of “loving” and you’ve got yourself a “whole lotta love.” So, what does…

Shakespeare quotes can seem like good choices for Valentine’s Day cards, but his tales of love are nuanced and complicated.

Thomas Coryate (c. 1577-1617) was one of the most widely traveled Englishmen of his day, motivated by curiosity, wanderlust, and fame. He served as a fascinating example of how early modern English travelers to the Islamic world might use their…

Can you identify what’s happening in each of these three scenes from Hamlet? The drawings by British illustrator John Jellicoe are part of the Folger collection.

Women played a key role in creating, promoting, and ultimately undermining “Vortigern” and William Henry Ireland’s other Shakespeare forgeries.

From new podcasts to online events, theater companies are creating great new ways to engage with Shakespeare and other amazing writers.