Anecdotal Shakespeare
The curses associated with the Scottish play. Using a real skull for the Yorick scene in "Hamlet." Over the centuries, these and other fascinating theatrical anecdotes have attached themselves to the ...
20 Sep 201630min
How Shakespeare's First Folio Became a Star
Today, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s works, printed in 1623, can sell for millions of dollars. But the First Folio wasn’t always valued so highly. In this podcast episode, two experts i...
6 Sep 201632min
Elizabethan Medicine
Being a patient in Shakespeare’s time was an adventure. You might be told to drink liquid gold or syrup of violets. You might undergo a violent purgation to take the bad humors out of your body. They...
23 Aug 201628min
American Moor
"Othello" is the story of a tragic murder and suicide involving a dark-skinned general and his aristocratic, white-skinned bride. Who should direct it? Who’s “allowed” to? What if a white director a...
9 Aug 201625min
The Food of Shakespeare's World
This episode shifts slightly from our usual intense focus on Shakespeare. Instead, we are talking about the world that he inhabited, or at least a small part of that world: the kitchen. Kitchens, and ...
26 Jul 201628min
Recreating the Boydell Gallery
In the decades after Shakespeare's death, his works temporarily fell out of favor. His renaissance is usually credited to actor-manager David Garrick, who staged a Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769. Riding ...
12 Jul 201629min
Worlds Elsewhere
In 2012, Andrew Dickson watched a Shakespeare play in London that set him off on a quest. When it ended, he had traveled to Poland, Germany, India, China and all across the United States. He chronic...
29 Jun 201626min
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
