Shakespeare Anyone?

In today's episode, we will be exploring how the bubonic plague impacted society and culture in early modern England. We'll discuss governmental and individual responses as well has the effect quarantines had on the early modern theatre and the development of Shakespeare's plays. And we'll learn that, when compared to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic...well, not much has changed.  Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Folger Shakespeare. Living through the plague – excerpt: 'death by Shakespeare' by Kathryn Harkup. Shakespeare & Beyond, 5 May 2020, https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2020/05/05/plague-death-by-shakespeare-kathryn-harkup-excerpt. Accessed 24 Jan 2023. Greenblatt, Stephen. What Shakespeare actually wrote about the plague. The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-shakespeare-actually-wrote-about-the-plague. Accessed 24 Jan, 2023. Kobrak, Paul. Shakespeare’s Restless World, performance by Neil MacGregor, et al., episode 17, BBC, 8 May 2012. Accessed 24 Jan. 2023. Newman, Kira L. S. “Shutt Up: Bubonic Plague and Quarantine in Early Modern England.” Journal of Social History, vol. 45, no. 3, 2012, pp. 809–34. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41678910. Accessed 24 Jan. 2023. Shapiro, James. Ch. 14 Plague. In The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. essay, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2016, pp. 549-596. 

Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of topics that may not be suitable for all audiences. Please listen with care.  In this episode, we explore the depictions of sex and sexuality in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. While this play (and many of Shakespeare's comedies) end with a hetero-normative marriage or three, we'll explore the depictions of queer sex in Early Modern literature and Shakespeare before diving into Early Modern England's fascination with bestiality and zoophilia.  Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: BOEHRER, BRUCE THOMAS. “Bestial Buggery in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The Production of English Renaissance Culture, edited by David Lee Miller et al., Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 123–50. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctvr6970z.8. Accessed 29 Dec. 2022. Olson, Paul A. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Meaning of Court Marriage.” ELH, vol. 24, no. 2, 1957, pp. 95–119. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2871824. Accessed 29 Dec. 2022. SANCHEZ, MELISSA E. “‘Use Me But as Your Spaniel’: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Early Modern Sexualities.” PMLA, vol. 127, no. 3, 2012, pp. 493–511. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41616842. Accessed 29 Dec. 2022. Vanhoutte, Jacqueline. Age in Love: Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Court. University of Nebraska Press, 2019. Wyrick, Deborah Baker. “The Ass Motif in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4, 1982, pp. 432–48. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2870124. Accessed 29 Dec. 2022.

It's time to talk about donkeys! Just kidding...a little. In this episode, we are going to unpack the major themes and tropes in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. We'll also discuss the challenges presented by some problematic plot points and what theatremakers are left to reckon with when they produce A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Korey Leigh Smith and Elyse Sharp. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Shakespeare, William, and Harold F. Brooks. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloomsbury, 1979. SparkNotes Editors. “A Midsummer Night's Dream: Literary Devices: Themes.” Sparknotes, SparkNotes, 2005, https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/msnd/themes/.

Hello 2023! It is time for us to embark on our next play: A Midsummer Night's Dream! As always, we begin our series with a synopsis of the play in case it has been a while since you've read the play or if it is completely new to you. So, let's dive into a summary of a play about fairies, lovers, and a donkey!   Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Shakespeare, William, and Harold F. Brooks. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloomsbury, 1979.

As we wrap up 2022, we are taking a look back at the plays we covered this year by re-reading them and discussing how our readings of the plays has changed after doing our research for our episodes.  Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Korey Leigh Smith and Elyse Sharp. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Revised ed., Bloomsbury Arden, 2016. Shakespeare, William, and R. A. Foakes. King Lear: Arden Third Series. Bloomsbury, 2018.

In today's episode, we are joined by Professor Arthur W. Frank to discuss his new work, King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations, part of Oxford University Press's My Reading series. We discuss Frank's work outside of the realm of Shakespeare, what drew him to Shakespeare and King Lear, and how the play can offer insight into our own lives.  As part of the My Reading series, King Lear is a personal meditation on a great literary work. Arthur Frank brings a career of studying illness experience and suffering to consider how King Lear can aid people whose lives need help. Reading King Lear leads Frank to both an encounter with his own old age and a source of consolation-companionship—in his future. This book doesnot try to minimize vulnerabilities, but it shows what is fully human, and thus shared, in suffering. The book introduces readers to King Lear, and it invites those who know the play to a new consideration for its ability to affect people's lives. Arthur Frank spent his career teaching at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He haslectured internationally, holding visiting professorships in England and Australia. His work has focused on the experience of serious illness, beginning with his memoir, At the Will of the Body and his most cited work, The Wounded Storyteller. He is an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada and recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the Canadian Bioethics Society. ABOUT MY READING What is it like to love a book or author? Who has most influenced or challenged your life or work? Whose standing would you most wish to enhance or rescue? What is like to have a thought or idea, doubt or memory, not cold and in abstract, but live in the very act of reading? What is it like to feel, long after, that this writer is a vital part of your life? My Reading invites authors from across academia and the professions to focus their attentions upon the work of a single literary writer. They tell us what it’s like to care about an author, strive to recreate through specific examples imaginative versions of what those authors and works represent, and seek to share their effect upon the reader’s own thinking and development. Other titles currently available in the My Reading series as below, with more to follow in 2023. • Samuel Beckett – Rosemarie Bodenheimer • Honoré de Balzac – Peter Brooks • William James – Philip Davis • Charles Dickens – Annette Federico Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp. Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was using the stage name "Korey Leigh Smith". Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Frank, Arthur W. King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations. Oxford University Press, 2022.

In recognition of the National Day of Mourning/Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, we are examining how British colonialism impacted the depiction of people of color  in Shakespeare's work.  We also suggest listening to our episode on Shakespeare and the Colonial Imagination (Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify) and the All My Relations podcast’s episode “ThanksTaking or ThanksGiving” (Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify) Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp. Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was "Korey Leigh Smith". Episode written and researched by Kourtney Smith. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Barin, Filiz. “Othello: Turks as ‘the Other’ in the Early Modern Period.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, vol. 43, no. 2, 2010, pp. 37–45. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41960526. Accessed 7 Sep. 2022. Singh, Jyotsna G. “Chapter Two: Historical Contexts 2: Shakespeare's World and Productions of Difference” Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory, The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2020, pp. 57-78

We’re changing things up a bit today and bringing you a preview of a new podcast we’re enjoying and think you will, too. Where There’s a Will searches for the surprising places Shakespeare shows up outside the theater. Host Barry Edelstein, artistic director at one of the country’s leading Shakespeare theaters, and co-host writer and director Em Weinstein, ask what is it about Shakespeare that’s given him a continuous afterlife in all sorts of unexpected ways? You’ll hear Shakespeare doing rehabilitative work in a maximum security prison, helping autistic kids to communicate, shaping religious observances, in the mouths of U.S. presidents, and even at the center of a deadly riot in New York City. Join Barry and Em as they uncover the ways Shakespeare endures in our modern society, and what that says about us. In this preview, Barry and Em explore one of The Bard’s most popular works: Hamlet. Hamlet is everywhere right now. But this isn't the same play you read in high school English. We meet the minds behind a singing Hamlet, The Northman's Amleth, and Pulitzer prizewinner Fat Ham's Juicy – and ponder what makes this Shakespearean tragedy speak directly to our time. Hear the full episode, and more from Where There’s a Will, at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/wtaw?sid=anyone.

We've reached the end of our Hamlet series! As always, to wrap up our study of a play, we are looking at a handful of noteworthy adaptations and critiquing them. With Hamlet, there were so many great ones to choose from (ahem, The Lion King), but to keep this episode from being as long as the play we stuck to the following:  Grigori Kozinstev's 1964 Russian film adaptation Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet film adaptation Royal Shakespeare Company's 2016 production starring Paapa Essiedu Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp. Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was "Korey Leigh Smith". Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Branagh, Kenneth, and David Barron. Hamlet: A Kenneth Branagh Film. Sony Pictures Releasing, 1996. Kozint︠s︡ev Grigoriĭ, et al. Hamlet. Kozinstev's Hamlet (1964), Sovexportfilm, 1963, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McKuFBAp_i8. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022. Shakespeare, William. Royal Shakespeare Company: Hamlet. Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company, 2016, https://video.broadwayhd.com/movies/hamlet?display=portrait. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

In our latest installment of our Shakespeare's Language Framework series, we are discussing the opposite of a discussion: soliloquies and asides!  In this episode, we look at Marcus Nordland's work with the Shakespearean Inside Database and what trends we can find in the solo speeches of Shakespeare when we look at them across the Complete Works.  Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp. Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was "Korey Leigh Smith". Episode written and researched by Elyse Sharp. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone Works referenced: Nordlund, Marcus. The Shakespearean inside: A Study of the Complete Soliloquies and Solo Asides. Edinburgh University Press, 2017. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0519z.5. Accessed 25 Oct. 2022.