Off the shelf
Excerpt: Culinary Shakespeare
Eating and drinking were of central importance to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Culinary Shakespeare, the first collection devoted solely to the study of food and drink in Shakespeare’s plays, reframes questions about cuisine, eating, and meals in early modern drama.…

Excerpt: The Private Life of William Shakespeare
Lena Cowen Orlin, the Folger Institute’s former Executive Director, illuminates key parts of Shakespeare’s life in her new book, from his father and his wedding to his home, will, and memorial bust; the replica of the bust shown here is…

Some spellbinding October reads
As we enter the year’s spookiest month, explore a trio of contemporary novels that involve early modern witchcraft. Much has changed since the deadly witch hunts of Shakespeare’s era, and the contrasting approaches of these books are a good way…

The origins of the English history play - Excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and War
What is the English history play? “A dramatic study of civil conflict in England,” writes David Bevington in this excerpt from the newly published Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and War. “Above all, its purpose is to explore the causes, the…

Excerpt: 'Shakespearean' by Robert McCrum
When Robert McCrum began his recovery from a life-changing stroke in the 1990s, he discovered that the only words that made sense to him were snatches of Shakespeare. The First Folio became an endless source of inspiration for “journeys of…

Excerpt – ‘All's Well’ by Mona Awad
Mona Awad’s new, darkly funny novel All’s Well tells the story of a theater professor who is convinced that staging All’s Well That Ends Well will remedy all of her woes. Along the way, she meets three strange benefactors with…

Excerpt - Shakespeare and Forgetting - by Peter Holland
Shakespeare and Forgetting by Peter Holland considers how Shakespeare explores the concept of forgetting and how forgetting functions in performance. The excerpt below focuses on the character of Sir John Falstaff, who appears in several of Shakespeare’s plays. Why do…

Excerpt: Shakespeare and Latinidad - "In a Shakespearean Key" by Caridad Svich
Caridad Svich. Photo by Jody Christopherson. Playwright and translator Caridad Svich writes about encountering A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a child growing up in a Cuban-American community in Florida: “In Shakespeare, before he was a writer on my syllabus in…

Richard III and disability: Excerpt - "Unfixable Forms" by Katherine Schaap Williams
What did Richard III and his disability represent to Shakespeare’s original audiences? And how has this Shakespeare villain shaped the field of early modern disability studies today? Katherine Schaap Williams takes a closer look at these questions in the below…

Excerpt - "A Short History of Shakespeare in Performance" by Richard Schoch
How have directors sought to make Shakespeare productions relevant to contemporary political issues? What is it about these plays that makes them so politically resonant? Richard Schoch (Queen’s University Belfast) explores these questions in the excerpt below, taken from A…

Excerpt - "Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes: Shakespeare in 1619, Bibliography in the Longue Durée" by Zachary Lesser
What’s the most influential book for Shakespeare scholarship? The First Folio of 1623 immediately comes to mind for many. However, there’s another book, less famous but still incredibly important for Shakespeare scholars: Edward Gwynn’s set of Pavier Quartos, found in…
Excerpt: 'Irregular Unions' by Katharine Cleland
Katharine Cleland examines Jessica and Lorenzo’s clandestine marriage in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” in this excerpt from her book “Irregular Unions.”