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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Pronouncing English as Shakespeare Did

Pronouncing English as Shakespeare Did

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue." —HAMLET (3:2:1–2) When Shakespeare wrote his lines, and actors first spoke them, how did they say the words—and wh...

20 Mars 201528min

Brave New Worlds: The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus

Brave New Worlds: The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus

Sometimes it seems you can hear or see traces of Shakespeare just about anywhere on Earth. But how about around the planet Uranus, which had not even been discovered in Shakespeare's time? In this ce...

20 Mars 201540min

Codes and Ciphers from the Renaissance to Today

Codes and Ciphers from the Renaissance to Today

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions..." —HAMLET (4.5.83) It's a striking comment that occurs late in this podcast—and by the time you hear it, you may well agree: "Witho...

20 Mars 201514min

When Romeo Was a Woman

When Romeo Was a Woman

"I will assume thy part in some disguise And tell fair Hero I am Claudio" —MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING(1.1.316) The actress Charlotte Cushman was a theatrical icon in 19th century America, known to the pr...

20 Mars 201529min

Romeo and Juliet Through the Ages

Romeo and Juliet Through the Ages

"For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." —ROMEO AND JULIET(5.3.320) Though the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet is a perennial favorite, the world around the play h...

20 Mars 201531min

Music in Shakespeare

Music in Shakespeare

"Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song, That old and antique song we heard last night." —Twelfth Night (2.4.3) Rebecca Sheir, host of our Shakespeare Unlimited series, interviews Ross W. Duffin, ...

20 Mars 201520min

Artistic Directors Talk Shakespeare

Artistic Directors Talk Shakespeare

"And by that destiny to perform an act / Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come / In yours and my discharge." (The Tempest, 2.1.288) Shakespeare's words and stories may be timeless, but what ...

20 Mars 201519min

Shakespeare and Insane Asylums

Shakespeare and Insane Asylums

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t." (Hamlet, 2.2.223) Plenty of people today consider Shakespeare a literary genius, a pillar of theater history, a gifted writer of timeless love po...

20 Mars 201518min

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