Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

What were the top musical hits of Shakespeare’s England? What lyrics were stuck in people’s heads? What stories did they sing on repeat? The 100 Ballads project is a deep dive into the hits of early modern England—a kind of 17th-century Billboard Hot 100. Drawing from thousands of surviving printed ballads, researchers Angela McShane and Christopher Marsh have ranked the most popular songs of the period. These broadsides—cheaply printed sheets sold for a penny—offer surprising insight into the period’s interests, humor, and even news headlines. McShane and Marsh discuss what these ballads tell us about moral norms, sensationalism, and everyday life. Some are instructive, some are bawdy, and some are unexpectedly feminist. This episode brings to life the soundscape of Shakespeare’s world with clips from newly recorded versions of the most popular ballads and a look at how the team developed their ranking system. >> Explore the project and hear the songs yourself at www.100ballads.org Christopher Marsh is Professor of Cultural History at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published extensively on various aspects of society and culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. His most relevant book in relation to the 100 Ballads project is Music and society in early modern England (Cambridge, 2010). This is an overview of music-making in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it includes chapters on musicians, dancing, bell-ringing, psalm-singing and, of course, ballads. Angela McShane is an Honorary Reader in History at the University of Warwick. She is a social and cultural historian, researching the political world of the broadside ballad and the political and material histories of intoxicants and the everyday. She has published widely on political balladry, including numerous book chapters, and journal articles in Past and Present, Renaissance Studies, Journal of British Studies, Journal of Early Modern History, Popular Music Journal and Media History. She is also the author of a reference work, Political Broadside Ballads in Seventeenth Century England: A Critical Bibliography (2011). A monograph on the broadside ballad trade and its politics in seventeenth-century Britain is forthcoming with Boydell and Brewer. She is also a Co-Investigator for a related website and book project: “Our Subversive Voice: The history and politics of protest music 1600-2020.” From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 6, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Who was Lambert Simnel—the boy who nearly claimed the Tudor throne? In late 15th-century England, identity wasn’t just a matter of birth—it could be a political weapon, a tool for rebellion, and sometimes, an outright performance. The story of Simnel, a boy plucked from obscurity and passed off as the York heir, reveals how precarious the Tudor dynasty really was—and how easily the lines between truth and fiction could blur. Author Jo Harkin joins us to explore the strange life of Simnel, the so-called Yorkist “pretender” who nearly toppled Henry VII. In her new novel The Pretender, Harkin imagines Simnel’s life beyond the history books, from his childhood on a farm to his years at court. Along the way, she unpacks what it meant to be groomed for kingship, what royal power struggles looked like from a child’s point of view, and how historical fiction can fill in the gaps of the past. Though Shakespeare never wrote a play about Henry VII, his portrayal of Richard III helped shape how we remember the Wars of the Roses—and how we understand power, myth, and legacy. Harkin reflects on those cultural inheritances, showing how writing about this era means grappling with historical facts and the fictions we’ve come to accept. Simnel’s story reminds us that what endures isn’t always what’s real, but what people are ready to believe. Jo Harkin’s debut speculative fiction novel, Tell Me An Ending, was a New York Times Book of the Year. Her first historical novel, The Pretender, was published in April 2025 in the U.K. and the U.S. She lives in Berkshire, England. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 22, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Historian Surekha Davies joins us to explore how ideas of wonder, race, and the monstrous shaped European thought in the age of empire. These weren’t just abstract concepts—they were embedded in scientific discourse, travel writing, and the visual culture of the time. Shakespeare’s plays reflect these cultural currents. In The Tempest, the character of Caliban—described as savage, deformed, and barely human—embodies the fears and fantasies that haunted early modern encounters with the so-called “New World.” Davies unpacks how Caliban’s portrayal draws on the same ways of thinking that labeled certain people monstrous and how Shakespeare’s work offers a lens into the period’s views on race, colonialism, and imagination. As we confront new technologies like artificial intelligence, Davies helps us consider what today’s “monstrous others” might be and how early modern ways of thinking linger in our discussions of what it means to be human. Dr. Surekha Davies is a British author, speaker, and historian of science, art, and ideas. Her first book, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human, won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history from the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Roland H. Bainton Prize in History and Theology. She has published essays and book reviews about the histories of biology, anthropology, and monsters in the Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Science, and Aeon. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 8, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Judith Shakespeare’s life is a mystery. While history records her as the younger daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, much of her story remains untold. In her new novel, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, author and Shakespeare scholar Grace Tiffany brings Judith to life—filling in the gaps with adventure, resilience, and rebellion. A sequel to My Father Had a Daughter, this novel follows Judith into later adulthood. No longer the headstrong girl who once fled to London in disguise to challenge her father, she is now a skilled healer and midwife. However, when she is accused of witchcraft, she must escape Stratford and navigate a world where Puritans have closed playhouses, civil war splits England, and even her father’s legacy is at risk. Tiffany explores how she merged fact and fiction to reimagine Judith’s life. From the real-life scandal that shook her marriage to the theatrical and political disturbances of her time, the author examines what it means to write historical fiction—and how Shakespeare’s life and legacy continue to inspire new stories. Grace Tiffany is a professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at Western Michigan University. She has also taught Shakespeare at Fordham University, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Notre Dame, where she obtained her doctorate. She is also the author of My Father Had a Daughter and The Turquoise Ring. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published March 25, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Julia Armfield, a London-based fiction writer known for her novels exploring climate catastrophe, discusses her latest work, 'Private Rites.' She delves into how King Lear's themes resonate in a world shaped by rising sea levels, particularly through the lens of three sisters navigating their father’s death. The conversation touches on sibling dynamics, eco-critical themes, and the intersection of queerness and horror in contemporary narratives. Armfield also reflects on the everyday struggle amidst disaster and how familial power plays manifest in modern life.

What if Gertrude had more power than we thought? What if Ophelia’s fate wasn’t sealed from the start? And what does it really mean to mother a prince who might be losing his mind? Playwright Lauren Gunderson, one of the most produced living playwrights in America, takes on Hamlet in her latest play, A Room in the Castle. This sharp, feminist reimagining follows Ophelia, her handmaid, and Queen Gertrude as they navigate the dangers of Elsinore, wrestling with the weight of survival, duty, and defiant hope in the face of chaos. Gunderson, known for her witty and powerful storytelling in The Book of Will and The Half-Life of Marie Curie, discusses how she reclaims the voices of Hamlet‘s women, why Gertrude’s famous speech about Ophelia’s drowning might not be as simple as it seems, and how she crafted new ending that brings new light to Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. >> Get your tickets to Folger Theatre’s A Room in the Castle, a co-production with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, on stage March 4 – April 6

How did early modern England understand race and how has that influenced our thinking? Race is often considered a recent construct, but Shakespeare’s works—both his plays and poetry—reveal a diverse world already aware of race, identity, and difference. In this episode, Patricia Akhimie, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, discusses the growing field of study and what we can learn from it. She is joined by two of the scholars contributing essays to the guide, Dennis Britton and Kirsten Mendoza, who are exploring the ways race, gender, and power intersect in Shakespeare’s long narrative poems. Britton examines Venus and Adonis, investigating how Shakespeare’s portrayal of beauty, fairness, and desire upends traditional thinking about sexuality and race. Mendoza focuses on human rights in The Rape of Lucrece, revealing how Shakespeare’s use of color symbolism exposes early modern ideas about race, gender, and bodily autonomy. Both scholars illuminate how Shakespeare’s works have encoded ideas about race, which continue to resonate today. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race is an essential resource for scholars, teachers, students, and readers interested in this important area of Shakespeare research. Patricia Akhimie is Director of the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Director of the RaceB4Race Mentorship Network, and Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark. She is editor of the Arden Othello (4th series), author of Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World and, with Bernadette Andrea, co-editor of Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World. Dennis Austin Britton is an Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include early modern English literature, Protestant theology, premodern critical race studies, and the history of emotion. He is the author of Becoming Christian: Race, Reformation, and Early Modern English Romance (2014), coeditor with Melissa Walter of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (2018), and co-editor with Kimberly Anne Coles of ‘Spenser and Race’, a special issue of Spenser Studies (2021). He is currently working on a new edition of Othello for Cambridge University Press and a monograph, ‘Shakespeare and Pity: A Literary History of Race and Feeling.’ Kirsten N. Mendoza is an Associate Professor of English and Human Rights at the University of Dayton. Her first book project, ‘A Politics of Touch: The Racialization of Consent in Early Modern English Literature’, examines the conceptual ties that link shifting sixteenth- and seventeenth-century discourses on self-possession and sexual consent with England’s colonial endeavors, involvement in the slave trade, and global mercantile pursuits. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare Bulletin, The Norton Critical Edition of Doctor Faustus, Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature, and Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 10, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

How do Shakespeare’s timeless themes translate to the South Asian diaspora? Could the man from Stratford himself be reimagined as a meddling auntie? Novelist Nisha Sharma’s If Shakespeare Were an Auntie trilogy takes on this challenge, taking inspiration from The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night to create contemporary romance novels set in the vibrant, close-knit world of the South Asian community. Sharma’s books explore love, identity, and social norms through characters navigating family expectations and community dynamics. These playful and poignant adaptations highlight Shakespeare’s enduring relevance while addressing modern issues like gender expectations and cultural identity. This episode explores Sharma’s creative process, her lifelong love for Shakespeare, and her approach to blending the playwright’s timeless themes with modern romance. From chaotic weddings to sharp banter, her novels reflect the humor and humanity of Shakespeare’s work while offering fresh perspectives for today’s readers. Nisha Sharma is the critically acclaimed author of YA and adult contemporary romances including My So-Called Bollywood Life, Radha and Jai’s Recipe for Romance, The Singh Family Trilogy, and the If Shakespeare was an Auntie series. Her books have been included in best-of lists by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, and more. She lives in Pennsylvania with her Alaskan husband, her cat Lizzie Bennett, and her dogs Nancey Drew and Madeline. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 28, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the Executive Producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Olivia Hussey, whose spirited portrayal of Juliet when she was just a teenager herself became iconic for generations of people watching the 1968 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, died on December 27, 2024. In 2019, we were lucky enough to record an interview with Hussey. To honor her life and work, we’re bringing it to you again. Olivia Hussey was just fifteen when Franco Zeffirelli cast her in Romeo and Juliet. When the film was released in October 1968, it catapulted her and Leonard Whiting, the young actor playing Romeo, to global stardom. For many Shakespeare lovers, Zeffirelli’s film is still the definitive film adaptation of the play. Fifty years after the movie’s release, Hussey’s memoir, The Girl on the Balcony: Olivia Hussey Finds Life After Romeo and Juliet, told the story of the actress’s life before, during, and after Romeo and Juliet. We talked with Hussey and asked her how she felt about Shakespeare before making the movie (“very boring”), filming the balcony scene (“I’d bump my teeth into his chin”), the endless press tour, and whether she’d do it all again. Barbara Bogaev interviews Olivia Hussey. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Originally published on January 22, 2019, and rebroadcast on January 13, 2025 © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Speak Again, Bright Angel,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the Associate Producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer; updated by Paola García Acuña. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at VoiceTrax West in Studio City, California.

What does it mean to be called an “upstart crow”? In 1592, a pamphlet titled Greene’s groats-worth of witte described William Shakespeare, in the first allusion to him as a playwright, with this phrase, calling him “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers.” This phrase sparked centuries of speculation. As Darren Freebury-Jones explores in his book, Shakespeare’s borrowed feathers: How early modern playwrights shaped the world’s greatest writer, Shakespeare’s so-called borrowing was neither unusual for the time nor a weakness—it was ultimately a testament to his genius. Exploring how Shakespeare navigated a competitive theatrical scene in early modern England, Freebury-Jones reveals the ways in which Shakespeare reshaped the works of contemporaries like John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, and Christopher Marlowe into something distinctly his own. By combining traditional literary analysis with cutting-edge digital tools, he uncovers echoes of Lyly’s witty comedies and gender-bending heroines, Kyd’s tragic revenge dramas, and Marlowe’s powerful verse in Shakespeare’s early plays. This episode sheds light on Shakespeare’s role as a responsive and innovative playwright deeply embedded in the early modern theatrical community. Listen in to learn more about the influences on the “upstart crow” as he created a canon of timeless works. Dr Darren Freebury-Jones is author of the monographs: Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival (Routledge), Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd (Manchester University Press), and Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers (Manchester University Press). He is Associate Editor for the first critical edition of The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd since 1901 (Boydell and Brewer). He has also investigated the boundaries of John Marston’s dramatic corpus as part of the Oxford Marston project and is General Editor for The Collected Plays of Robert Greene (Edinburgh University Press). His findings on the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries have been discussed in national newspapers such as The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Observer, and The Independent as well as BBC Radio. His debut poetry collection, Rambling (Broken Sleep Books), was published in 2024. In 2023 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of his contributions to historical scholarship.