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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Patrick Stewart on a Life Shaped by Shakespeare

Patrick Stewart on a Life Shaped by Shakespeare

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Michael Patrick Thornton on Learning to Breathe Again with Shakespeare

Michael Patrick Thornton on Learning to Breathe Again with Shakespeare

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Shakespeare and the Ocean, with Steve Mentz

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29 Elo 202333min

Farah Karim-Cooper on The Great White Bard

Farah Karim-Cooper on The Great White Bard

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Mat Osman's The Ghost Theatre Imagines the Lives of Elizabethan London's Child Actors

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