Shakespeare & Beyond

Debra Ann Byrd writes about encountering an early female Othello in the Folger collection and developing her memoir and solo show, Becoming Othello.

Hamnet was William Shakespeare’s only son, but he died in 1596 at the age of 11. Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel, Hamnet, imagines a story in which a young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an…

Juliet’s famous balcony speech begins with “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” But what comes next? Take this quiz to see if you can correctly order the lines of the speech.

‘American Moor’ playwright and actor Keith Hamilton Cobb writes about speaking back to Shakespeare, White American Theater, and frameworks of privilege.

Wondering where you’ll find Shakespeare this summer? We’ve gathered a wealth of online performances, conversations, and programs from the Folger’s theater partners that you can check out in July and August.

American actress Charlotte Cushman was a 19th-century theatrical icon, known for playing traditionally male roles like Romeo and Hamlet. She was not the only actress of her time to play these parts, but her style was uniquely assertive and athletic.…

  Richard III, act 5 scene 3, in the tent, Richard asleep, ghosts of persons he had murdered. Painted by J. Opie, R.A. ; engraved by W. Sharp. Published 1794. Folger Shakespeare Library. Nightmares and ominous dreams are used to…

Is Romeo and Juliet a play about love? Well yes, but it’s also about violence, argues Casey Kaleba, the fight director for many Folger Theatre productions and one of the Washington, DC, area’s most sought-after fight coaches for stage plays.

  Cyril Walter Hodges. The fire at the Globe, 1613 (illustration for: Shakespeare’s Theatre, 1964). Folger Shakespeare Library. While William Shakespeare never wrote what we might think of as a science-fiction play, he knew intuitively that the theatre — more…

Shakespeare and his contemporaries were fascinated with bees as metaphors for human behavior, especially when it came to politics and government.

At the heart of Keith Hamilton Cobb’s one-man play American Moor are explorations of blackness, racial dynamics in American theater, “ownership” of Shakespeare, and the subtext of Othello. He has performed the play across the United States, including an off-Broadway…

Get an up-close look at the title page of one of the Folger’s 82 First Folios and learn more about it by clicking through captions that zoom in on different parts of the page.