Molly Yarn on Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors'
Over the centuries there have been hundreds of editions of Shakespeare’s plays: Small, inexpensive schoolbook copies of individual plays, massive, leatherbound editions of the complete works, and ever...
1 Mars 202234min
Stephen Marche on How Shakespeare Changed Everything
Even 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare’s influence is profound. But is it right to say that he changed everything? That the assertion Stephen Marche makes in his book "How Shakespeare Cha...
15 Feb 202230min
Black Women Shakespeareans, 1821 – 1960, with Joyce Green MacDonald
Between 1821 and 1960, it would have been vanishingly rare to see a Black woman onstage performing Shakespeare. In Dr. Joyce Green MacDonald’s chapter in the new Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and...
1 Feb 202233min
Cutting Plays for Performance, with Aili Huber
It might surprise you to learn that just about every production of a Shakespeare play that you’ve ever seen onstage has been cut, from student shows to Broadway revivals. Cutting Plays for Performance...
18 Jan 202234min
J.R. Thorp on Learwife
A banished queen receives word that her husband and three daughters are dead. Learwife, a new novel by J.R. Thorp, picks up where Shakespeare’s King Lear leaves off: The queen is Berte, Lear’s wife an...
4 Jan 202237min
Lena Cowen Orlin on The Private Life of William Shakespeare
Dr. Lena Cowen Orlin’s new book, The Private Life of Shakespeare, isn’t exactly a biography. Rather, it’s an exhaustive return to the primary sources that document Shakespeare’s life, a book that scho...
21 Dec 202135min
Sir Antony Sher (Rebroadcast)
Sir Antony Sher, one the greatest Shakespearean actors of the 20th and 21st centuries, died in December, 2021, in Stratford Upon Avon. He was 72. In 2018, we were lucky enough to record an interview w...
7 Dec 202135min
Holidays in Shakespeare's England, with Erika T. Lin
Many of us have holiday traditions: we trim trees, spin dreidels, trick-or-treat, set off fireworks, and host parties. People had holiday traditions in Shakespeare’s time too: they crossdressed, rolep...
24 Nov 202132min
