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.

Jaksot(296)

Rita Dove on Shakespeare and Her Poem of Welcome for the Folger

Rita Dove on Shakespeare and Her Poem of Welcome for the Folger

When the Folger reopens on June 21 and you come to take a walk in our new west garden, look down at the garden bed. There, you'll see a new poem, written for the Folger by US Poet Laureate emerita Rit...

30 Tammi 202437min

John Guy And Julia Fox on Their New Biography of Anne Boleyn

John Guy And Julia Fox on Their New Biography of Anne Boleyn

Even after appearing in a Shakespeare play, historical romance novels, a Broadway musical, and prestige TV dramas, there's still more to learn about Anne Boleyn. A new biography by the team of husban...

16 Tammi 202433min

David and Ben Crystal Share Shakespeare Quotations for Your Everyday Life

David and Ben Crystal Share Shakespeare Quotations for Your Everyday Life

Shakespeare has the perfect lines for riding into battle or stumbling around a stormy heath. But does he have the right stuff to take us on a daily commute or a trip to the grocery store? On this epis...

2 Tammi 202435min

What Happened to the Princes in the Tower, with Philippa Langley

What Happened to the Princes in the Tower, with Philippa Langley

The most unforgivable crime in Richard III has to be when the king orders the murder of his two young nephews, Edward and Richard. But what if Richard III was framed? Philippa Langley is the amateur ...

19 Joulu 202333min

Will Somer: Peter K. Andersson on Henry VIII's Court Fool

Will Somer: Peter K. Andersson on Henry VIII's Court Fool

What comes to mind when you think about a "court jester?"  What if we told you that fools in the Tudor court didn’t look or sound anything like the zany clowns you have in mind? Historians don’t know...

5 Joulu 202331min

Isabelle Schuler on Lady Macbeth and Queen Hereafter

Isabelle Schuler on Lady Macbeth and Queen Hereafter

Isabelle Schuler’s debut novel Queen Hereafter attempts to fill in a backstory for Lady Macbeth. The book takes place in 11th century Scotland, where a king’s reign tended to be short and brutal. For ...

21 Marras 202330min

400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio, with Emma Smith

400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio, with Emma Smith

The First Folio—the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays—hit bookstores 400 years ago this November. Emma Smith of Oxford University tells us just what this famous book has been up to for th...

7 Marras 202329min

The Bloomsbury Group and Shakespeare, with Marjorie Garber

The Bloomsbury Group and Shakespeare, with Marjorie Garber

We talk with Harvard Professor Marjorie Garber about how modernist writers of London’s Bloomsbury Group made Shakespeare their own. Garber’s most recent book—her twentieth—is Shakespeare in Bloomsbury...

24 Loka 202331min

Suosittua kategoriassa Premium

nikotellen
anni-jaajo
jaljilla
tuplakaak
olipa-kerran-otsikko
antin-matka
grekovit
hei-baby-3
maanantaimysteeri
i-dont-like-mondays
sita
terveisia-perheesta
palmujen-varjoissa
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
kaksi-aitia
murhan-anatomia
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
the-harlin-show
backmanholmavuo
ihan-oikeesti