Staging Shakespeare

In 1660, women (rather than men) began playing female roles, including female Shakespearean roles, on the professional English stage. Learn more about these early actresses.

Every month, we share a snapshot of Shakespeare in performance across the country. What’s onstage in January? We visit our theater partners to find out.

Are there similarities between staging Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ and putting on the Shakespeare plays that are these companies’ bread and butter? We asked our theater partners.

With Herbert Beerbohm Tree as the king, the four-minute silent movie “King John” (1899) is often called “the first Shakespeare film,” as Michael Anderegg explains. Watch the surviving one-minute fragment and learn more about its theatrical star.

Austin Tichenor suggests that “Twelfth Night” is the “Hamlet” of the comedies, dealing with loss, separation, and death and using some surprisingly similar elements — but in a far happier way.

Every month, we share a snapshot of Shakespeare in performance around America. What plays are onstage in November? We visit our theater partners to find out.

Discover American child star Elsie Leslie through a fascinating mix of Folger finds, including Elsie Leslie as Prince Arthur in King John and posing for a photo with preeminent actor Edwin Booth.

Every month, we share a snapshot of Shakespeare in performance around America. What plays are onstage this month? We visit our theater partners to find out.

The Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s Pop-UpRight Shakespeare series brings lively, “upright,” on-your-feet staged readings of Shakespeare’s plays to surprise locations in and around Nashville.

Austin Tichenor writes about the theater-going experience in Shakespeare’s time and how that contrasts with audience expectations today.

Find out what’s onstage at Shakespeare theaters across the United States in September.

This month might be your last chance to catch some of that sweet, sweet summertime Shakespeare before the weather starts to cool down and it’s time to head back to school. See what the Folger’s theater partners have onstage this…