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Off the shelf

Book excerpts, reviews, author interviews, and reading recommendations
Excerpt – ‘Lady Romeo’ by Tana Wojczuk
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Excerpt – ‘Lady Romeo’ by Tana Wojczuk

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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.…

Excerpt ⁠— Keith Hamilton Cobb’s ‘American Moor’: An introduction by Kim Hall
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Excerpt ⁠— Keith Hamilton Cobb’s ‘American Moor’: An introduction by Kim Hall

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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…

Living through the plague times - Excerpt: 'Death By Shakespeare' by Kathryn Harkup
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Living through the plague times - Excerpt: 'Death By Shakespeare' by Kathryn Harkup

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What would it have been like to live through the plague outbreaks of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? And what insight does that give us into the mentions of plague in Shakespeare’s plays? Kathryn Harkup has looked at the science…

Excerpt - "How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education" by Scott Newstok
How to Think Like Shakespeare
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Excerpt - "How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education" by Scott Newstok

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What habits of mind should we seek to cultivate? In his new book How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, Scott Newstok draws on Shakespeare’s plays and common instructional practices of his day to answer this question.…

Prospero's epilogue as Shakespeare's farewell? Excerpt - 'This is Shakespeare' by Emma Smith
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Prospero's epilogue as Shakespeare's farewell? Excerpt - 'This is Shakespeare' by Emma Smith

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In this excerpt from her new book, This is Shakespeare (published Mar 31 in the United States), Emma Smith probes the biographical interpretations that readers have layered over Shakespeare’s plays, particularly The Tempest, and how that shapes what we think.

7 excerpts from Shakespeare-inspired novels
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7 excerpts from Shakespeare-inspired novels

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Looking to escape in a good book? Take a break from non-fiction, and read these excerpts from Shakespeare-inspired novels that we’ve featured in the past two years on Shakespeare & Beyond.

"The Taming of the Shrew" on the American stage before "Kiss Me, Kate": An excerpt from "Shakespeare in a Divided America" by James Shapiro
James Shapiro
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"The Taming of the Shrew" on the American stage before "Kiss Me, Kate": An excerpt from "Shakespeare in a Divided America" by James Shapiro

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The Taming of the Shrew is often referred to as one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” because of its controversial depiction of gender roles; last year’s Broadway production of Kiss Me, Kate, the 1948 musical based on The Taming of the…

Excerpt: The Afterlife of Shakespeare's Sonnets
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Excerpt: The Afterlife of Shakespeare's Sonnets

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Why weren’t Shakespeare’s sonnets included in the First Folio? And what was the effect on the way that later readers and critics considered Shakespeare’s total body of work? Jane Kingsley-Smith of Roehampton University, London, explores these questions in the below…

Excerpt - Shakespeare’s Church and the Pilgrim Fathers: Commemorating Plymouth Rock in Stratford
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Excerpt - Shakespeare’s Church and the Pilgrim Fathers: Commemorating Plymouth Rock in Stratford

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Did you know that the Pilgrims have a presence in the church where William Shakespeare was baptized and buried? A stained glass window that bears the inscription, “The Gift of America to Shakespeare’s Church,” shows the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth…

Excerpt: Shakespeare and the Folktale
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Excerpt: Shakespeare and the Folktale

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What are the connections between traditional folktales and Shakespeare’s plays? Charlotte Artese, an English professor at Agnes Scott College in Georgia, sets out to explore these folktale sources in a new anthology of stories, Shakespeare and the Folktale, published October…

Caliban by the Yellow Sands: Shakespeare and immigrant communities in New York - Excerpt: Here in This Island We Arrived
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Caliban by the Yellow Sands: Shakespeare and immigrant communities in New York - Excerpt: Here in This Island We Arrived

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Here in This Island We Arrived: Shakespeare and Belonging in Immigrant New York is a 2019 book from Elisabeth H. Kinsley that explores Shakespeare performance in late 19th- and early 20-century Manhattan during a time of profound demographic change, when…

Emma Smith on Falstaff: An excerpt from 'This Is Shakespeare'
This is Shakespeare book cover
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Emma Smith on Falstaff: An excerpt from 'This Is Shakespeare'

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Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith takes 20 chapters to discuss 20 different Shakespeare plays in her new book This Is Shakespeare, offering insights on key characters, plot twists, and performance challenges. The excerpt below, which focuses on the character of Falstaff…

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