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.
James Shapiro: The Year of Lear
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 32 1606 was a critical year for Shakespeare’s creative career. It was the year in which he wrote King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. It was also a time in which the king of England, James…
Editing Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 31 Just what exactly does it mean to edit the works of Shakespeare, particularly since we have no surviving manuscript copies? Why is it that new editions of the plays continue to be published? In this episode…
Shakespeare Not Stirred
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 30 Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas is the creation of two English professors who combined their love of the cocktail hour and their love of Shakespeare to write a collection of Bard-inspired cocktail and…
Great Shakespeareans
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 29 If you were to make a list of the people who have left an enduring imprint on how the world interprets, understands, and receives Shakespeare, who would you choose? About a decade ago, Peter Holland, the…
Shakespeare, Chaucer, and The Tabard Inn
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 28 What if Shakespeare and his friends had gotten together and carved their names on the wall of an inn made famous by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales? In 2015, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor Dr. Martha Carlin…
Shakespeare in Hong Kong
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 27 Hong Kong, a former British colony, has been staging and teaching Shakespeare plays for nearly 150 years. In this episode from our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, we see how Shakespeare is stretched to tell a story of…
Shakespeare on Film
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 26 For most of us, “seeing Shakespeare” means experiencing live actors in a theater. But for more than 100 years, Shakespeare’s words, plots, settings and characters have also been brought to life on film. Shakespeare on film…
Shakespeare's France and Italy
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 25 Shakespeare’s plays are well stocked with merchants of Venice, gentlemen of Verona, lords and ladies of France, and other foreign characters. But what did he—and his audiences—really know about such distant places and people? In this…
Elizabethan Street Fighting
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 24 From on-stage duels to the brutal mob in Julius Caesar, street fighting transforms many of the plays; we talk with Casey Kaleba, a sought-after fight coach for stage plays and Vanessa McMahon, who wrote about real-life Elizabethan murders.
Myths About Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 23 Even if you’re not a Shakespeare scholar, there are things you have learned about Shakespeare and his plays throughout your life – that it’s bad luck to say the name of “the Scottish play” or that…
Recounting Shakespeare's Life
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 22 What do we know about Shakespeare’s life? The answer: Not as much as we would like to. As much or as little, in other words, as we would about any middle-class Englishman of his time. This…
Designing Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 21 There’s an old Broadway saying (sometimes attributed to Richard Rodgers) that “No one ever walked out of a theater humming the scenery.” Nevertheless, costume and scenery designers can be vital to the success of a play.…