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.
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.…
African Americans and Shakespeare
African American engagement with Shakespeare goes back a long way—maybe even farther than you’d imagine. And like so much else surrounding American race relations, African American performance of Shakespeare is inextricably linked to the experiences of…
Shakespeare in Black and White
We talk with scholars Marvin MacAllister and Ayanna Thompson about Black Americans and Shakespeare in the period between the end of the Civil War and the 1950s: from Reconstruction, through the period of Jim Crow segregation; and into the Civil Rights Era.
Rarely Performed Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 18 Every year, theaters across the United States and the world treat us to Shakespeare—which usually means such frequently produced plays as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. Some Shakespeare plays, however, are rarely performed today. Why…
A New First Folio Discovery
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 17 In the fall of 2014, the world learned of a remarkable discovery: An old book in a French library, acquired in the 1790s, was identified as an unknown copy of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare—the…
Pronouncing English as Shakespeare Did
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 16 When Shakespeare wrote his lines, and actors first spoke them, how did they say the words—and what does that tell us? Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks original pronunciation (OP) with Shakespearean actor…