Shakespeare Unlimited podcast
William Shakespeare and his works are woven throughout our global culture, from theater, music, and films to new scholarship, education, amazing discoveries, and more. In our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, Shakespeare opens a window into topics ranging from the American West, to the real history of Elizabethan street fighting, to interviews with Shakespearean stars. As you’ll hear, he turns up in surprising places, too—including outer space. Join us for a “no limits” tour of the connections between Shakespeare, his works, and our world.
Harriet Walter
In 2012, London’s Donmar Warehouse opened an all-female production of Julius Caesar, starring Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus and directed by Tony Award-nominated director Phyllida Lloyd. The production was set in a women’s prison, and it was the first of a trilogy of all-female productions, all starring Walter, that The Guardian would call “one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years.”
Deborah Harkness: A Discovery of Witches
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 117 In 1994, Deborah Harkness was doing research at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library when she stumbled across the Book of Soyga, a long-lost manuscript treatise on magic that once belonged to Elizabethan scientist and occult philosopher John Dee.…
Acting, Emotion, and Science on Shakespeare's Stage
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 116 How do actors do what they do? How do they stir up emotions, both in themselves and in us as we watch them? Joseph Roach’s 1985 book The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting…
Simon Mayo: "Mad Blood Stirring"
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 115 In a novel just released in the US, author and longtime BBC radio host Simon Mayo tells an amazing—but true—story: that England’s first all-black production of Romeo and Juliet was staged by Black American prisoners of…
The Actor and the Assassin: Edwin and John Wilkes Booth
The Booths’ story is like one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, with an unstable father, a rivalry between brothers, and an ending that changes the course of history.
Olivia Hussey: The Girl on the Balcony
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 113 Olivia Hussey was just fifteen when Franco Zeffirelli cast her in Romeo and Juliet. When the film was released in October 1968, it catapulted Hussey and Leonard Whiting, the young actor playing Romeo, to global stardom. For…
Duke Ellington, Shakespeare, and Such Sweet Thunder, with Douglas Lanier
In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts at Canada’s Stratford Festival. Afterward, festival staff asked if he’d consider writing a piece about Shakespeare. A year later, Ellington premiered and recorded Such Sweet Thunder, a suite of twelve tunes inspired by the Bard and his characters.
The ABCs of Performing Hamlet
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 111 Imagine getting the chance to interview Jude Law, Maxine Peake, Adrian Lester, David Tennant, Simon Russell Beale, and Nicholas Hytner about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What would you ask? Would you want to hear about backstage hijinks? About…
Pop Culture Shakespeare and Teens with Stefanie Jochman
op culture representations of Shakespeare’s plays aren’t just fun: they can help kids—and adults—to take ownership of Shakespeare’s language, critically examine his plots, and connect to his themes. And from West Side Story to The Simpsons, there’s no shortage of options.
Julie Schumacher on The Shakespeare Requirement
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 109 Should college students be required to study Shakespeare? As American universities examine the role of the liberal arts and humanities in our society, what will—and what should—happen to the Bard’s place in English curricula? The Shakespeare…
How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 108 What’s a knave? How about a varlet? Did people in Shakespeare’s time really throw the contents of their chamber pots out of their windows? And was that, like… encouraged? If you’ve ever wondered about the naughty bits…
Shakespeare Uncovered
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 107 Shakespeare Uncovered has provided a crash course in Shakespeare’s best-known plays, presented in hour-long documentary form and guided by film and theater stars like Morgan Freeman, Kim Cattrall, Ethan Hawke, and Helen Hunt. In the third…