Shakespeare & Beyond

Books on manners became so popular during the Elizabethan period that it was only a matter of time before someone satirized them.

“Manners maketh man” was the motto of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Would your own table manners pass inspection?

Shakespeare’s plays are full of battles dominated by men, but one of his most compelling speeches about the life of a soldier comes from a woman: Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part 1, speaking to her husband, Hotspur.

When Hamlet first encounters his father’s ghost, the Danish prince’s reactions reflect Shakespeare’s understanding of the theological differences between early modern Catholics and Protestants regarding the spiritual realm, says David Scott Kastan.

Transparencies, popular in the late 1700s, use back-lighting to reveal a secret image. See one from the Folger collection that reveals Shakespeare’s ghost in Westminster Abbey.

Illustrated editions of the Complete Works would have been the first encounter with Shakespeare that many Victorian readers would have had.

The Roman distaste of powerful women, their misunderstanding of the Egyptian way of life, and Octavian’s political need to consolidate his rise to dictator created our image of Cleopatra today.

The tricks of this pop-up Shakespeare book, written by the Reduced Shakespeare Company and illustrated by Jennie Maizels, are a perfect way to express the theatricality of Shakespeare’s plays.

Every month, we share a snapshot of Shakespeare in performance around America. What plays are onstage this month? We check in with our theater partners.

We’ve got eight great ideas for Shakespeare-themed Halloween costumes, from Cleopatra and Richard III to Falstaff and Snug the Lion.

“Measure for Measure” is technically a comedy, which means it ends with a marriage. So why does Isabella respond to the Duke’s proposal with silence?

In “Dunbar,” a new novel by Edward St. Aubyn that retells the Shakespeare play “King Lear,” Henry Dunbar makes the mistake of handing over control of his global corporation to his eldest daughters, who bribe a doctor to declare him…