Inside Shakespeare's plays

What are today’s audiences to make of Isabella and her 16th-century quandary? Scholar Marissa Greenberg juxtaposes Shakespeare with more recent authors to illuminate “the enduring challenge of upholding ideas against often harsh realities.”

Sophie Fiennes’ documentary captures the magic of actors connecting with their text and characters during workshops with the world-renowned Cheek by Jowl Theatre Company, led by director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod.

“Theaters are time machines, and Shakespeare knew it,” writes Austin Tichenor. “Only in the theater can people so persuasively journey from the present to another time and place. It’s an act of collective imagination.”

Acclaimed actors and real-life spouses Brian Cox and Nicole Ansari-Cox share stories from their extraordinary careers on stage and screen, from King Lear and Succession to their current roles as Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach.

Shakespeare’s setting of 16th-century Vienna was a stand-in for his own London. Austin Tichenor writes that recent productions updated to the 20th century give fresh historical specificity to the play’s potentially distant and abstract ethical dilemmas.

How do you write a “complete” life of Shakespeare when very little complete information about his life exists? Paul Menzer manages to do just that—while throwing some “wobbles into the orbit” of well-trenched folk wisdom.

From a re-imagining of The Tempest set in a Houston school gym to Macbeth’s Weird Sisters practicing brujería, The Bard in the Borderlands compiles fantastic transformations of Shakespeare by Chicanx and Indigenous playwrights.

Are you lily-livered? Try our Shakespearean insults quiz about some of the high points — or low points — in the plays.

A variety of collection items show mixed audience responses to the play, enough so that it has been described as a “problem play.” Explore responses—by a government, by a student, and by artists—over the centuries.

What were readers of Shakespeare thinking about as the United States was forming? Scholar Brandi K. Adams looks at a critical edition of Antony and Cleopatra published in 1776 and how our understanding of the plays builds off past readings.

Why is it important for lawyers to brush up their Shakespeare? University of Michigan Law professor and author Len Niehoff discusses what Shakespeare can teach lawyers about looking at problems from every possible angle.

As he wraps up his final season as Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival, Antoni Cimolino discusses revisiting The Tempest, the power of forgiveness, and the “rough magic” that makes theater possible.