Shakespeare Unlimited

Can you imagine Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra transposed to rural India, where Antony becomes a cock fighter and Cleopatra a medicine woman? Or what about a Hamlet in the Himalayas, with the title character seeking forgiveness and reconciliation instead of revenge? Mark…

Laura Wayth confesses that she’s never read any of Shakespeare’s plays. But she’s listened to the plays performed over and over, and it’s her keen ear that informs her advice to actors in this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited. Wayth is…

l-r: Rex Daugherty (Tybalt), Aaron Bliden (Benvolio), and Brad Koed (Mercutio) in Romeo and Juliet, directed by Aaron Posner, Folger Theatre (2013). Photo by Teresa Wood. We covered a lot in our podcast about Shakespeare this year, from the popular…

Katherine Duncan-Jones. Photo by Teresa Wood. Every few years it seems, a newly discovered portrait of Shakespeare emerges, only to be discredited by scholars after the obligatory media maelstrom. Many observers have noted that the cyclical nature of these announcements…

Luke Skywalker strikes an iconic Hamlet pose in this illustration from the William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series. Credit Nicolas Delort. Courtesy Quirk Books. Shakespeare and Star Wars would appear to have very little in common. Or at least they did,…

Henry Clay Folger paid a world record price for a book—not once, but twice—as he became the world’s leading collector of Shakespeare First Folios. In this episode from Shakespeare Unlimited, economist and author Andrea Mays talks with Neva Grant about…

Roxi Victorian as Hero (center) with the cast of Folger Theatre’s Much Ado About Nothing, a 2009 production inspired by the D.C. Caribbean Carnival. Photo by Carol Pratt. As you’ll hear in this episode of the Folger’s Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, Shakespeare…

A recent episode of the Folger’s Shakespeare Unlimited podcast offers an interesting interview with British Shakespearean scholar and author Stanley Wells. At the heart of that conversation, one might say, is a simple question. For all the contributions of directors…