Shakespeare Unlimited podcast

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 68 In 2015, a new musical called Something Rotten! opened on Broadway. The plot: Two brothers living in England in 1595 have had their playwriting careers upended by the arrival of a new guy from Stratford upon…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 67 Oxford University Press drew attention last year for deciding that, in the New Oxford Shakespeare, the plays Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 would no longer be listed as having been written by Shakespeare alone.…

For nearly a century, people have been sending letters asking for advice on love and romance to Verona, Italy. The letters were all addressed to Juliet. Glenn Dixon tells us about the volunteers today, called Juliet’s secretaries, who answer these letters.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 65 When we think of Shakespeare in the American West, Hollywood immediately comes to mind, but this podcast episode also takes us back to the California Gold Rush and the Americans who brought Shakespeare with them when…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 64 Since 2002, Gregory and Jeffery Ameen Qaiyum, better known as GQ and JAQ – the Q Brothers – have been using hip-hop to adapt and update the plays of William Shakespeare. At the time we recorded…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 63 Since 2002, a major organization in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, has supported an archaeological dig on the former grounds of a house called “New Place.” New Place was one of the biggest houses in Stratford…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 62 While print sales of adult fiction are down in the last decade, the juvenile market – which includes YA – has actually gone up 40 percent. In this episode, two YA authors talk about their writing,…

On our podcast, Stephen Greenblatt discusses how Shakespeare shapes characters and narratives. He also explores how the French Renaissance writer Montaigne influenced Shakespeare, and how Shakespeare pushed back on Montaigne’s ideas.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 60 How does Shakespeare portray girls and girlhood in his plays, and what do those portrayals tell us about life in Elizabethan and Jacobean England? Our guest for this Shakespeare Unlimited episode, Deanne Williams of York University…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 59 Many people would probably tell you that what they love most about Shakespeare is his language. So what does Shakespeare become when the words are translated into a different language, one that uses visual signs rather…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 58 | For ten years, Laura Bates, a professor at Indiana State University, taught Shakespeare to a group of inmates considered the “worst of the worst” – men incarcerated in the solitary confinement unit at Indiana’s Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. Every week, Professor Bates sat down in between the cells of these men to discuss Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello and Richard II. She shares her experiences in a book titled Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 57 The curses associated with the Scottish play. Using a real skull for the Yorick scene in Hamlet. Over the centuries, these and other fascinating theatrical anecdotes have attached themselves to the plays of William Shakespeare. Many…