Thinking Through Shakespeare, with David Womersley

Thinking Through Shakespeare, with David Womersley

Many readers turn to Shakespeare for the beauty of his language or the power of his stories. But in Thinking Through Shakespeare, Oxford scholar David Womersley suggests that the plays offer something else as well: a way of exploring some of the deepest questions about human life. Womersley looks at tragedies like Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear to show how Shakespeare places audiences inside difficult moral and philosophical problems. The plays raise questions about identity, power, and the tension between doing what is right and doing what is personally advantageous. Rather than presenting clear answers, Shakespeare lets these ideas collide on stage. In this episode, Womersley explains how Shakespeare’s plays become what he calls “crucibles” for thinking. As characters struggle with competing values and impossible choices, audiences go on that journey with them—testing ideas, reconsidering assumptions, and confronting the same enduring dilemmas that have shaped human thought for centuries.

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Adjoa Andoh on Shakespeare

Adjoa Andoh on Shakespeare

Known to many as Lady Danbury in Netflix’s Bridgerton, Adjoa Andoh, MBE, is also a celebrated Shakespearean actor and director. Across her career, Andoh has returned to Shakespeare not as a fixed can...

23 Maalis 37min

The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

When you visit a new city, one of your first stops might be a museum. It turns out that public art galleries are largely an 18th-century invention. In London in 1789, publisher John Boydell helped sha...

24 Helmi 36min

Whitney White and Shakespeare

Whitney White and Shakespeare

Whitney White is a theatrical powerhouse. A director, writer, actor, and musician, White’s work has been seen on Broadway, Off Broadway, and at major institutions including The Public Theater, the Bro...

10 Helmi 34min

Shakespeare and Mathematics

Shakespeare and Mathematics

Many Shakespeare fans don’t think of themselves as “math people.” They’re theater kids, poetry lovers, bookworms, right? But in Shakespeare’s world, math and literature were deeply intertwined. In Muc...

27 Tammi 34min

Spain's Golden Age of Theater

Spain's Golden Age of Theater

While Shakespeare was reshaping English drama, a parallel theatrical revolution was unfolding in Spain. During the Spanish Golden Age, playwright Lope de Vega pioneered the comedia nueva, a bold new d...

13 Tammi 31min

The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary

The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary

Why does Samuel Pepys’s diary still matter 200 years after it was first published? In her new book, The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary, historian Kate Loveman examines how Pepys’s extraordina...

29 Joulu 202536min

Celebrating Elizabethan Cooking, with Sam Bilton

Celebrating Elizabethan Cooking, with Sam Bilton

What did people really eat in Shakespeare’s England? In her new book, Much Ado About Cooking, food historian Sam Bilton uncovers the vibrant and surprising world of early modern cuisine—where sugar wa...

16 Joulu 202534min

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