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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The Year of Lear

The Year of Lear

1606 was a critical year for Shakespeare’s creative career. It was the year in which he wrote KING LEAR, MACBETH, and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. It was also a time in which the king of England, James I, fa...

23 Syys 201529min

Editing Shakespeare

Editing Shakespeare

Just what exactly does it mean to edit the works of Shakespeare, particularly since we have no surviving manuscript copies? Why is it that new editions of the plays continue to be published? In this ...

9 Syys 201531min

Shakespeare Not Stirred

Shakespeare Not Stirred

"Shakespeare Not Stirred" is the creation of two English professors who combined their love of the cocktail hour and their love of Shakespeare to write a collection of Bard-inspired cocktail and hors ...

26 Elo 201525min

Great Shakespeareans

Great Shakespeareans

If you were to make a list of the people who have left an enduring imprint on how the world interprets, understands, and receives Shakespeare, who would you choose? About a decade ago, Peter Holland,...

29 Heinä 201521min

Shakespeare and The Tabard Inn

Shakespeare and The Tabard Inn

What if Shakespeare and his friends had gotten together and carved their names on the wall of an inn made famous by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? The intriguing possibility of such a link between these ...

15 Heinä 201519min

Shakespeare in Hong Kong

Shakespeare in Hong Kong

"Last thing he did, dear queen, He kissed—the last of many doubled kisses— This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart." ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1.5.45-48) Hong Kong, a former British colony, ha...

1 Heinä 201524min

Shakespeare on Film

Shakespeare on Film

For most of us, “seeing Shakespeare” means experiencing live actors in a theater. But for more than 100 years, Shakespeare’s words, plots, settings and characters have also been brought to life on fil...

17 Kesä 201523min

Shakespeare's France and Italy

Shakespeare's France and Italy

"Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth, . . . Have stooped my neck under your injuries And sighed my English breath in foreign clouds" —RICHARD II (3.1.16, 19–20) Shakespeare's plays are well stock...

20 Touko 201522min

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