As You Like It
Will Tosh on the Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare
Scholar Will Tosh explores the hidden queer lives in Shakespeare’s works, revealing how early modern gender fluidity and same-sex desire influenced the Bard’s plays and characters.
Order It: "Sermons in stones" from As You Like It
Shakespeare’s phrase “sermons in stones” is from a speech in As You Like It. Take this quiz to see if you can correctly order the lines.
14 Shakespeare quotes about new beginnings
As the Folger prepares to reopen, we turn to Shakespeare’s plays for quotations about new beginnings and fresh starts.
Adrian Lester on Playing Rosalind, Henry V, Othello, and Hamlet
Actor Adrian Lester walks us through big moments in his illustrious career, including Cheek by Jowl’s all-male “As You Like It” and Peter Brook’s “Hamlet.”
Order It: Jaques's "All the world's a stage"
“All the world’s a stage,” says Jacques in a famous speech from As You Like It about life and the passage of time. Take this quiz to see if you can correctly order the lines that follow.
Speaking what we feel: Shakespeare’s plague plays
How do Shakespeare’s plays reflect a life filled with plague outbreaks, asks Austin Tichenor — and do we see his plays in new ways now?
ENCORES: "Play, Music!" with Brian Kay (2017)
Folger Public Programs is pleased to present ENCORES. This week, enjoy a selection from Brian Kay’s 2017 talk on Shakespeare and music.
Up Close: A 'Seven Ages of Man' painting
Take a closer look at a 19th-century oil painting in the Folger collection that depicts all seven ages of man from Jaques’s speech in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”
Better than laughing: Renaissance melancholy
The most famous book about Renaissance melancholy, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), celebrates its four hundredth anniversary this year. Though it was published five years after Shakespeare’s death, it gathers together ideas about melancholy from antiquity right through…
ENCORES: ‘As You Like It’ produced by Folger Theatre (2017)
Folger Public Programs presents ENCORES, a weekly online series highlighting past performances and recalling the rich history of programming on the historic Folger stage. See a clip of ‘As You Like It’ from Folger Theatre’s 2017 production.
Excerpt — ‘Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy’ by Paula Marantz Cohen
“Its sense of empathy for the gendered position—and the pains and difficulties that accompany it on both sides—is at the heart of its comic warmth,” writes Paula Marantz Cohen about Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” in this excerpt from her…
Outdoor Shakespeare: The pioneers of a summer tradition
Shakespeare by the sea, on the river, in the park or garden, on the common – in the summertime Shakespeare’s plays are everywhere outdoors! High-profile shows in New York’s Central Park or at Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival may come to…