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.

Episoder(298)

Othello and Blackface

Othello and Blackface

This podcast episode, which deals with race, Othello, and how the Elizabethans portrayed blackness onstage, offers a startling, new interpretation of Desdemona’s handkerchief that is changing the way ...

14 Jun 201634min

Shakespeare and Religion

Shakespeare and Religion

The period when Shakespeare was writing was one torn by disagreements over the proper method of observing Christianity in England. Protestantism was at war with Catholicism and the Church of England ...

31 Mai 201626min

Shakespeare in Africa

Shakespeare in Africa

When the British came to colonize the African continent in the middle of the 1800s, they brought Shakespeare with them. But after the British left power, it was often Shakespeare who leaders in Africa...

17 Mai 201633min

Creation of the First Folio

Creation of the First Folio

We likely wouldn’t have half of Shakespeare’s plays without the First Folio of 1623. Imagine a world without "Macbeth," "Twelfth Night," or "Julius Caesar." Our guest on this episode of Shakespeare Un...

3 Mai 201628min

Kill Shakespeare Comics

Kill Shakespeare Comics

Imagine a comic book series in which Shakespeare’s most popular characters team up in rival, warring camps bent on seizing control of the kingdom that is the world of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s called...

20 Apr 201629min

Reduced Shakespeare Company

Reduced Shakespeare Company

Discovered in a treasure-filled parking lot in Leicester, England, an ancient manuscript proves to be the long-lost first play by none other than the young William Shakespeare from Stratford. That’s t...

5 Apr 201625min

Inside the Folger Conservation Lab

Inside the Folger Conservation Lab

The Folger is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, and the crown jewels of that collection are the 82 First Folios. To celebrate 400 years of Shakespeare, eighteen of these rare books are trave...

22 Mar 201630min

Shakespeare and Magic

Shakespeare and Magic

In Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST, the magician Prospero conjures up a storm, charms his daughter to sleep, and uses his power to control Ariel and other spirits. Is this magic for real, or is Prospero pul...

8 Mar 201632min

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