Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

When you think about the Harlem Renaissance, theater might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But, says Dr. Freda Scott Giles, theater played a significant role in the blossoming of Black American arts and culture of the 1920s and '30s. Of course, because there’s little in the English-language theater untouched by Shakespeare, he was present in the Harlem Renaissance too. Banner Shakespeare productions included Orson Welles’s hit “Voodoo” "Macbeth," produced by the Federal Theater Project, and the "Midsummer"-inspired "Swingin’ the Dream," which was a Broadway flop despite the talents of musician Louis Armstrong and comedian Moms Mabley. We talk to Dr. Giles about how the artists and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance regarded the Bard. Plus, we visit the African Company of the 1820s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s to learn about more than a century of Black responses to Shakespeare. Freda Scott Giles is Associate Professor Emerita of Theater at the University of Georgia. She was a contributor to three books: "Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration," published in 2020; "Constructions of Race in Southern Theatre: From Federalism to the Federal Theatre Project," published in 2003; and "American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity," which was published in 1995. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 16, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “I Here Engage My Words,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer, with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Dr. Naomi Miller’s novel "Imperfect Alchemist" is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: a poet, playwright, translator, scientist, and colleague of writers like Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Mary Wroth, John Donne, and Emilia Lanier Bassano. Her name was Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. We talk to Miller about how she imagined the lives and voices of these literary lights, as well as Shakespeare, in her book. Plus, she discusses female alchemists of Elizabethan England, Sidney’s friends and beneficiaries, and how class shapes her characters’ outlooks. Naomi Miller is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Naomi Miller is a professor of English, as well as the Study of Women and Gender, at Smith College. She has written and edited nine books about early modern women authors and their worlds. Her first novel, "Imperfect Alchemist," was published by Allison & Busby in 2020. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 2, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Your Partner in the Cause,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson of Harvard University knew just how HBO's "Game of Thrones" would play out. Jon Snow, the illegitimate son, was a Richard III type, who would win the crown (and our hearts). But Daenerys Targaryen, as a kind of Henry VII, would defeat him in battle and win it back, restoring peace and order. Turns out he was wrong about all of that. But as Wilson kept watching, he began to appreciate the other ways "Game of Thrones" is similar to Shakespeare—like the way that both Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin’s stories translate the history of the Wars of the Roses into other popular genres. Jeff Wilson’s new book, "Shakespeare and 'Game of Thrones,'" explores some of the ways that Shakespeare influenced "Game of Thrones"… as well as some of the ways that "Game of Thrones" has begun to influence Shakespeare. Wilson is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson is a faculty member in the Writing Program at Harvard University, where he teaches the Why Shakespeare? section of the University's first-year writing course. His new book, "Shakespeare and 'Game of Thrones,'" was published by Routledge in 2020. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 19, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City California. Special thanks to DC-based playwright Allyson Currin for finding all of the "Game of Thrones" clips that appear in this episode.

Does Hamlet live in a Ptolemaic or Copernican solar system? Is Queen Mab a germ? Which falls faster: a feather or the Duke of Gloucester? In Shakespeare’s time, new scientific discoveries and mathematical concepts were upending the way people looked at their world. Many of those new ideas found their ways into his plays. We speak with Dr. Natalie Elliot about how Shakespeare interpreted the scientific innovations of the early modern period in his art. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Natalie Elliot is a storyteller, science writer, and a member of the faculty at St. John’s College. Her essay “Shakespeare’s Worlds of Science” was published in the Winter 2018 edition of The New Atlantis. Elliot is currently working on two books: an exploration of Shakespeare's engagement with early modern science called "Shakespeare and the Theater of the Universe," and a comic novel about woolly mammoths called "Megafauna." From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 5, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “If This Be Magic, Let It Be an Art,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer, with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

John Tufts was playing Hal in a production of "Henry IV, Part 1" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Every night, he would call Falstaff “that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly.” Hal is calling Falstaff is gross and overstuffed, but Tufts started to think that a roast Manningtree ox sounded actually pretty good. That role inspired the actor and cook to write a cookbook, "Fat Rascals: Dining at Shakespeare’s Table," a collection of over 150 recipes inspired by Shakespeare’s words and adapted from actual 16th- and 17th-century recipes. We hopped on Zoom and asked Tufts to tell us about the book and give us a remote cooking demonstration. He obliged by teaching our host, Barbara Bogaev, how to make a pork pasty inspired by Titus Andronicus and the mid-17th-century chef and author Robert May. Bon appétit! Award-winning actor John Tufts has performed at theaters across the country, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where he is a member of the Acting Company and performed in over 20 of Shakespeare's plays), Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage, Actor's Theater of Louisville, Ensemble Studio Theater, Guthrie Theater, Primary Stages, The Mint Theater Company, and others. He is the author of "Fat Rascals: Dining at Shakespeare’s Table," which is available on his website, john-tufts.com From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published December 8, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Make Two Pasties,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer, with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Christine Albright-Tufts and Chris Spurgeon.

For most of the 1700s, Shakespeare was considered a very good playwright. But in the 1800s, and especially during the Victorian period, Shakespeare became a prophet. Ministers began drawing their lessons from his texts. Scholars wrote books about the scriptural resonances of his words—often while taking those words out of context. Shakespeare’s works, the Victorians believed, offered religious revelations. In his new book, "The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century," University of Washington Associate Professor of English Charles LaPorte examines this moment in literary and religious history. We invited him to join us on the podcast to tell us how people in the 19th century thought about Shakespeare, how the moment helped give rise to the “authorship controversy,” and how sometimes, even today, we read Shakespeare like the Victorians. LaPorte is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. "The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century" was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Dr. Charles LaPorte's previous book, "Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible," was named Best First Book in Victorian Studies by the Northeast Victorian Studies Association in 2011. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published November 24, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “I Am No Thing To Thank God On,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer, with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

In his classes at Binghamton University, David Sterling Brown and his students examine Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of Critical Race Theory. You might have heard about Critical Race Theory lately: put simply, it’s a way of looking at society and culture that focuses on the intersections of race, law, and power. Ever since George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis outraged much of the nation, Critical Race Theory has taken on a new urgency for millions of Americans examining race, law and power with new eyes. Meanwhile, millions of other Americans, pointing to the realities of their own day-to-day lives, are basically saying: “I told you so.” What does it mean to read a play like Titus Andronicus with questions of race in mind? Brown, who has written extensively about that play, joins us on the podcast to discuss the ways that such a reading reveals an entire dimension of racial imagery and racial violence. We also talk about what it means for theaters and cultural institutions to engage in anti-racist work. David Sterling Brown is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. David Sterling Brown is a professor of English, General Literature and Rhetoric at Binghamton University/State University of New York. He is an executive board member of the RaceB4Race conference series. He is the author of “‘Is Black so Base a Hue?’: Black Life Matters in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus,” a chapter in the anthology Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); “Remixing the Family,” which appeared in Titus Andronicus: The State of Play (The Arden Shakespeare, 2019); and “The ‘Sonic Color Line’: Shakespeare and the Canonization of Sexual Violence Against Black Men,” published in the August 16, 2019 edition of The Sundial. He is currently finalizing his book project, Black Domestic Matters in Shakespearean Drama. More of his work has been published or is forthcoming in Shakespeare Studies, Radical Teacher, Hamlet: The State of Play, White People in Shakespeare, The Hare, Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies, Shakespeare and Digital Pedagogy, and other venues. With Jennifer L. Stoever, he joined the Folger Institute in August for a Critical Race Conversation: “The Sound of Whiteness, Or Teaching Shakespeare’s ‘Other “Race Plays”’ in Five Acts.” Watch it now on YouTube. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published November 10, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, ““Coal-Black is Better Than Another Hue,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

In March, theaters were beginning to cancel ongoing and upcoming productions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Glasgow-based actor Robert Myles had just lost a gig that would have taken him through April. He’d been chatting with his wife about what to do, and one night, he tweeted: "In response to #Covid_19, I'm going to set up an online #Shakespeare play-reading group via Zoom or similar. Once a week, evenings UK-time so US people can join during the day as well. We have to do what we can to stay connected and creative over this time. Anyone interested?" His tweet blew up, and that play-reading group became The Show Must Go Online. The hugely successful series, available for free on YouTube, is working through all of Shakespeare’s plays in the order in which they are believed to have been written. The Show Must Go Online creatively uses the everyday facts of life in a pandemic—living rooms, laptops, and, of course, Zoom—to bring actors from around the world together in innovative performances of Shakespeare’s plays. We talked with Myles about The Show Must Go Online’s incredible success, the process of creating virtual theater, and the community his project has created. He is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. New Show Must Go Online productions happen every Wednesday at 7 pm BST/2 pm EDT. To find out more, contribute, and watch all of their past performances, visit robmyles.co.uk/theshowmustgoonline/. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published October 27, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, ““Kindly to Judge Our Play,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Between 1348 and the early years of the 18th century, successive waves of the plague rolled across Europe, killing millions of people and affecting every aspect of life. Despite the plague’s enormous toll on early modern English life, Shakespeare’s plays refer to it only tangentially. Why is that? And what did people write about the plague in early modern England? Over the past 20 years, Rebecca Totaro has been collecting contemporary writing about the plague. She has written five books about its cultural impact. We asked her to join us for a conversation about what Shakespeare’s contemporaries wrote about the plague—and why, just as often, they turned away from it. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Rebecca Totaro is an associate dean and a professor of literature in the College of Arts & Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. She has written or edited five books: Meteorology and Physiology in Early Modern Culture; Representing the Plague in Early Modern England, which she wrote with Ernest B. Gilman; The Plague Epic in Early Modern England: Heroic Measures, 1603–1721; The Plague in Print; and Suffering in Paradise: The Bubonic Plague in English Literary Studies from More to Milton. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published October 13, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “’Twas Pretty, Though a Plague,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Charlotte Cushman was one of the most famous American theater artists of the mid-19th century. And while she was known for her Lady Macbeth and Oliver Twist’s Nancy, she was acclaimed for her performances as Romeo and Hamlet. The newest book about Cushman’s life is Tana Wojczuk’s "Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity." Cushman’s life was radical indeed. She played Shakespeare’s leading men with an emotionality and vulnerability that took audiences by surprise, started a bohemian artists’ colony in Rome, and lived publicly as a queer woman. We invited Wojczuk to join us on the podcast to chat about Cushman’s life, loves, work, tragedies, swordsmanship, and more. Tana Wojczuk is a senior nonfiction editor at Guernica. She teaches writing at New York University. She has worked as an arts critic for Vice, Bomb Magazine, and Paste and as a columnist for Guernica. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Believer, Gulf Coast, Apogee, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Rumpus, Narrative, Opium Magazine, and elsewhere. "Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America's First Celebrity" was published by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, in 2020. Wojczuk's appreciation for The Folger Shakespeare editions, "How Shakespeare Paperbacks Made Me Want to Be A Writer," appeared recently in The New York Times Magazine's Letter of Recommendation column. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 29, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Do You Not Know I Am a Woman?”, was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.