Shakespeare in the world
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West Side Story: 60 years as a cultural barometer
Sixty years old this week, the 1961 movie West Side Story, based on the acclaimed Broadway musical inspired by Romeo and Juliet, also became a de facto representation of US Latinx in musicals for many years.
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Speaking what we feel: Shakespeare’s plague plays
How do Shakespeare’s plays reflect a life filled with plague outbreaks, asks Austin Tichenor — and do we see his plays in new ways now?
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“Freshly remembered”: Modern spins on Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech
Actor Bill Pullman in a 2021 ad for Budweiser As proof that Shakespeare continues to inspire, one need look no further than a beer commercial that aired this past Fourth of July. Budweiser hired actor Bill Pullman to give a…
“I’m Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst days”: When rappers cite Shakespeare
The conversation around Shakespeare and hip-hop to date has tended to focus on either their linguistic malleability or the racial politics which surround the enmeshment of an originally African-American cultural movement with the work of a white playwright who, in…
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"Painter’s art": Biofictional perspectives on Shakespeare
Austin Tichenor as William Shakespeare in William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged), Folger Theatre, 2016. Photo by Teresa Wood. Depictions of William Shakespeare in fictional works are animated by the same impulse behind fanfiction — to fill in the…
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“Therefore we marvel”: WandaVision’s Shakespearean echoes
Austin Tichenor reflects on the tension the WandaVision series creates between character and genre, reminding him of Shakespeare’s plays.
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“Eventful history:” The Shakespearean success of The Crown
“It’s no wonder that The Crown — nominated for a record six Golden Globes in this Sunday’s annual awards ceremony — is so successful and popular,” writes Austin Tichenor. “Its depiction of an English monarch struggling to rule Britain while…
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To be or not to be your valentine: Shakespearean expressions of love
Shakespeare quotes can seem like good choices for Valentine’s Day cards, but his tales of love are nuanced and complicated.
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Our revels now are ended: Reflections on the Shakespeare 2020 Project
Shakespeare & Beyond readers may remember author Ian Doescher’s announcement here in December 2019 that he would be reading through all of Shakespeare’s works in 2020, inviting anyone interested to join him. Many of our readers said yes! We asked…
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Razing the Theatre, raising the Globe
The story of the Globe Theatre’s beginnings is one of intrigue, legal hairsplitting, holiday opportunity, and the disassembly of another playhouse.
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The post-modern peregrinations of Pericles
The story of Pericles continues to be retold by twenty-first century novelists, among them Mark Haddon, in The Porpoise (2019), and Ali Smith, in Spring (2019), the penultimate book in her “Seasonal Quartet.”
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What theater makers learned from 2020
We asked some of our Shakespeare theater partners what the events of 2020 had illuminated for them about Shakespeare and theater.