Shakespeare Unlimited podcast

In her book Tudor England: A History, Lucy Wooding argues that to really know the Tudors, we must look past the famous names and racy plotlines.

Theater-maker and past Folger Fellow Debra Ann Byrd tells us about her solo show.

Ian Smith returns to Shakespeare Unlimited and talks with Barbara Bogaev about how we can develop our “racial literacy” and read race in plays like Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet.

Talene Monahon’s play Jane Anger was inspired by the pandemic and a radical 16th-century proto-feminist pamphlet.

We talk to scholar Fiona Ritchie, whose new book, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble, details their rise to fame.

Poet Billy Collins talks about humanizing Shakespeare and other literary titans, delves into his own work and inspirations, and reads from his new collection, Musical Tables.

The former Royal Shakespeare Company Artistic Director joins us to talk about where to start with Shakespeare, directing Kenneth Branagh’s big break, and his new book.

Sir Ian McKellen tells us about some of his most famous roles: playing Macbeth opposite Dame Judi Dench, King Richard III with a screenplay he co-wrote, and Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings films.

Sir Ian McKellen played Hamlet in his thirties, and again in his eighties. He gives us his take on the Melancholy Dane.

The Elizabethan period marked an unusually rich moment for theories of consciousness and for the representation of thought in literature, says scholar Helen Hackett.

Adams talks with host Barbara Bogaev about how he turned a five-act play into a two-act opera—which scenes got the hook, new lines written in the style of the Bard, and what Shakespeare may have thought of the play’s characters.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 191 A new opera version of Hamlet is onstage at New York’s Metropolitan Opera through June 9. Composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn talk with host Barbara Bogaev about adapting the texts of the earliest editions…