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 Lost Plays
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 164 Today, the texts of roughly three thousand plays from the great age of Elizabethan theater are lost to us. The plays that remain constitute only a sixth of all of the drama produced during that period.…
Stephen Hopkins and Stephano
Shakespeare Unlimited: Epsiode 163 He was in a shipwreck. He was at Jamestown. He was on the Mayflower. And maybe, just maybe, he’s in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Stephen Hopkins was the only passenger on the Mayflower who had previously been…
Meme García on house of sueños
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 162 For generations, artists have been shaping and changing Shakespeare to fit their times. The best adaptations add specific textures of place and culture, or a fluidity of language that can take centuries-old work and make it…
Shakespeare in the Harlem Renaissance, with Freda Scott Giles
Freda Scott Giles tells us how the artists and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance regarded the Bard.
Naomi Miller on Mary Sidney and Imperfect Alchemist
Naomi Miller’s novel Imperfect Alchemist is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: poet, playwright, translator, and scientist Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.
Shakespeare and Game of Thrones
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 159 Based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, Harvard’s Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson knew just how HBO’s Game of Thrones would play out. Jon Snow, the illegitimate son, was a Richard III type, who would win…
Shakespeare, Science, and Art
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 158 Does Hamlet live in a Ptolemaic or Copernican solar system? Is Queen Mab a germ? Which falls faster: a feather or the Duke of Gloucester? In Shakespeare’s time, new scientific discoveries and mathematical concepts were upending…
Fat Rascals: In the Kitchen with John Tufts
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 157 Actor John Tufts was playing Hal in a production of Henry IV, Part 1 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Every night, he would call Falstaff a “roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly.” Hal means…
The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 156 For most of the 1700s, Shakespeare was considered a very good playwright. But in the 1800s, and especially during the Victorian period, Shakespeare became a prophet. Ministers began drawing their lessons from his texts. Scholars wrote…
Black Lives Matter in Titus Andronicus
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 155 In his classes at Binghamton University, David Sterling Brown and his students examine Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of Critical Race Theory. You might have heard about Critical Race Theory lately: put simply, it’s a way…
The Show Must Go Online
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 154 March 2020. Theaters were beginning to cancel ongoing and upcoming productions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Glasgow-based actor Robert Myles had just lost a gig that would have taken him through April. One night,…
Writing About the Plague in Shakespeare's England
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 154 Between 1348 and the early years of the 18th century, successive waves of the plague rolled across Europe, killing millions of people and affecting every aspect of life. Despite the plague’s enormous toll on early modern…