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 and Ukraine, with Irena Makaryk
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 190 Director Oleksandr “Les” Kurbas’s 1920 Macbeth was the first production of a Shakespeare play in Ukraine. Kurbas staged the play in the midst of the famine and violence of the Russian Civil War: Lady Macbeth fainted…
Leonard Barkan on Reading Shakespeare Reading Me
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 189 In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes that theater holds a “mirror up to nature.” In his new book, Princeton professor Leonard Barkan tells us that when he reads Shakespeare, it holds a mirror up to Leonard Barkan—and that…
Pamela Hutchinson on Asta Nielsen's Hamlet
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 188 In 1921, Asta Nielsen, one of the world’s biggest movie stars, had just formed her own production company, and decided to open it up by playing Hamlet. Plenty of women had done that on the stage…
How the Commedia Dell'Arte's Actresses Changed the Shakespearean Stage
English women didn’t act on London’s professional stages until the 1660s. But Pamela Allen Brown argues that despite this, star actresses from Italy altered both plays and playing in a process that began in the 1570s, when commedia dell’arte troupes first set foot in London.
Matías Piñeiro on His Shakespeare-Adjacent Films
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 186 An Argentine woman translates A Midsummer Night’s Dream while incessantly taping travel postcards to a wall. Two Argentine actresses vie for the same role in Measure for Measure. An actress in Buenos Aires seduces her colleague while…
Molly Yarn on Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors'
Over the centuries there have been hundreds of editions of Shakespeare’s plays: Small, inexpensive schoolbook copies of individual plays, massive, leatherbound editions of the complete works, and everything in between. At some point, every one of those…
Stephen Marche on How Shakespeare Changed Everything
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 184 Even 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare’s influence is profound. But is it right to say that he changed everything? That’s the assertion Stephen Marche makes in his book How Shakespeare Changed Everything. In the…
Black Women Shakespeareans, 1821 – 1960, with Joyce Green MacDonald
Joyce Green MacDonald shares the history of four Black women Shakespeareans who took to the American stage from 1821 – 1960: The African Grove Theatre’s “Miss Welsh,” Henrietta Vinton Davis, Adrienne McNeil Herndon, and Jane White.
Cutting Plays for Performance, with Aili Huber
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 182 It might surprise you to learn that just about every production of a Shakespeare play that you’ve ever seen onstage has been cut, from student shows to Broadway revivals. Cutting Plays for Performance: A Practical and…
J.R. Thorp on Learwife
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 181 A banished queen receives word that her husband and three daughters are dead. Learwife, a new novel by J.R. Thorp, picks up where Shakespeare’s King Lear leaves off: The queen is Berte, Lear’s wife and Regan,…
Lena Cowen Orlin on The Private Life of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 180 Dr. Lena Cowen Orlin’s new book, The Private Life of Shakespeare, isn’t exactly a biography. Rather, it’s an exhaustive return to the primary sources that document Shakespeare’s life, a book that scholar James Shapiro says “demolishes…
Holidays in Shakespeare's England, with Erika T. Lin
Some holidays from early modern England, like Christmas and Easter, are still big dates on today’s calendars, while others, like Martlemas, Shrovetide, Midsummer, or The May, are less familiar. Dr. Erika T. Lin shares how people celebrated and how they might have felt about Shakespeare’s plays in a period when the line between holiday festivity and theater wasn’t quite clear.