Inside Shakespeare's plays

Richard Ruiz (Peter Quince) and Holly Twyford (Bottom) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Folger Theatre, 2016. Teresa Wood.  A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream is one of William Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and for good reason. Frequently a young person’s introduction to…

The most famous book about Renaissance melancholy, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), celebrates its four hundredth anniversary this year. Though it was published five years after Shakespeare’s death, it gathers together ideas about melancholy from antiquity right through…

The word “love” appears 2,146 times in Shakespeare’s collected works (including a handful of “loves” and “loved”). Add to that 59 instances of “beloved” and 133 uses of “loving” and you’ve got yourself a “whole lotta love.” So, what does…

Chaotic and ineffective government may be a problem in our current life, but it makes for excellent drama in the theater — and in William Shakespeare’s hands, excellent comedy as well.

Is Romeo and Juliet a play about love? Well yes, but it’s also about violence, argues Casey Kaleba, the fight director for many Folger Theatre productions and one of the Washington, DC, area’s most sought-after fight coaches for stage plays.

Photograph by Lizzie Caswall Smith of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet. Folger Shakespeare Library. During this global pandemic, when the whole world is quarantined to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Hamlet seems like a character perfectly suited to…

Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew showcases one of the earliest and thorniest examples of teaching in a home environment—thorny both because of the way pedagogy in the play is full of cynicism and brutality, and because, on the…

Simple (Derrick Truby) and Mistress Quickly (Kate Eastwood Norris) in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Folger Theatre, 2019. Cameron Whitman Photography. The Merry Wives of Windsor was written at the end of the 16th century, and is what I would…

Shakespeare’s plays are full of references to food and cookery, but they’re not always very appetizing. In Hamlet, the ghost of elder Hamlet describes the effect of the poison that Claudius pours into his ears, how it winds its way…

Coriolanus at the Lyceum / Cyrus C. Cuneo. 1901. Folger ART Box C972 no.1 (size XL)In 1608, famine plagued England. Preachers responded with sermons begging the gentry to show compassion for the poor, King James I responded with royal proclamations…

In the image above, Constance Collier, magnificent as the dying Cleopatra, sits on her throne in a dimly-lit room, light sparkling off her crown, belt and spangled train. This 1906-07 London production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is considered a…

Desdemona and Emilia’s friendship inspires resistance and the courage to speak the truth, resulting in Iago’s exposure and Desdemona’s exoneration.