Inside Shakespeare's plays

Shakespeare mentions the word “fool” more than 300 times. Here are seven quotes, often spoken by one of his wise—and witty—fools.

Try our quiz about the women in Hamlet, from Gertrude to Ophelia… and more.

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.

What did Shakespeare’s characters have to say about love and lovers? Try our quiz to complete their lines.

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.

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.

Acclaimed Shakespearean actor Harriet Walter reimagines what the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet might have said after Juliet’s death in an excerpt from She Speaks!.

Peggy O’Brien helps us explore a giant, richly detailed fictional map filled with Shakespeare’s characters, newly created for the Folger’s exhibition spaces.

These Shakespeare quotes about friendship point to the complexities of relationships between characters in the plays.

Love-in-idleness, a flower also called pansy or heartsease, plays an important role in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” as Marissa Nicosia explores.

With the total lunar eclipse happening this weekend, we take a look at three of the ways Shakespeare used eclipses in his plays and poems.

“We’re told from a young age that tragedy teaches us important things about what it means to be human. But does it actually teach us anything, or simply reveal what we already know?” writes Austin Tichenor, who looks at Shakespeare’s…