Off the shelf

How can A Midsummer Night’s Dream speak to students today? Scholar Gail Kern Paster writes that the 400-year-old play connects to a wide range of contemporary issues that 21st-century audiences care about.

Who were the ladies-in-waiting to each of Henry VIII’s six wives and what were their lives like? An excerpt from Nicola Clark’s The Waiting Game looks at these overlooked but influential figures.

In Humans: A Monstrous History, Surekha Davies shows how our multi-millennial relationship with monsters has shaped the origins of the modern world and ideas about humanness and otherness.

2024 has been a great year for new books about—and inspired by—Shakespeare. Explore our list for gift giving or adding to your own TBR list.

In an excerpt from The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, historian Helen Castor travels back in time to the weeks just before Shakespeare’s play begins.

Austin Tichenor takes a look at Al Pacino’s new memoir, Sonny Boy. Pacino describes how central Shakespeare was to his development as a young actor.

The end of the year brings feasts, celebrations, and family. Our reading list of Folger Book Club picks offers a wide range of ways to reflect on the ties that bind us.

It may not surprise you to hear that Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s teenaged play but that might have surprised earlier readers who considered the play adolescent for other reasons.

Though Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months, he looms large over English history. In a new biography, historian and journalist Dan Jones examines Henry’s life anew.

With Halloween approaching, Austin Tichenor takes a look at Stephen King and a theme he shares with Shakespeare: the often tragic fate of younger characters.

In an excerpt from Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare, Will Tosh uses lines from Twelfth Night to trace Sebastian and Antonio’s relationship.

An excerpt from Reading the River in Shakespeare’s Britain surveys some of the cultural roles of rivers, including how Shakespeare mentioned them in his plays.