Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare materials. Advancing knowledge and the arts. Discover it all at www.folger.edu. Shakespeare turns up in the most interesting places—not just literature and the stage, but science and social history as well. Our "Shakespeare Unlimited" podcast explores the fascinating and varied connections between Shakespeare, his works, and the world around us.
Episodes
December 15, 2025 • 34 mins
What did people really eat in Shakespeare’s England? In her new book, Much Ado About Cooking, food historian Sam Bilton uncovers the vibrant and surprising world of early modern cuisine—where sugar was locked away like treasure, fresh salads were everyday fare, and a “banquet” meant a “post-feast after party” dessert course.
Bilton brings to life the flavors behind Shakespeare’s food references: mince pies, herb-packed green sauce...
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December 1, 2025 • 36 mins
Hamnet, the acclaimed novel by Maggie O’Farrell, is now a major film. The story imagines the life and death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, whose loss would later echo through one of his most famous tragedies, Hamlet. O’Farrell joins director and co-writer Chloé Zhao to reveal how they adapted the novel for the big screen.
With Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William, the film reframes the Shakespeare family story as one...
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November 16, 2025 • 36 mins
Before Shakespeare became a literary icon, he was a working writer trying to earn a living in an emerging and often precarious new industry. In The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare, Daniel Swift explores the dream of making money from creating art, a dream shared by James Burbage, who built The Theatre, the first purpose-built commercial playhouse in London, and a young Shakespeare. Nobo...
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November 2, 2025 • 36 mins
Imprisoned for nearly 20 years by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, fought her battles through words, sending and receiving coded letters hidden in books, garments, and even beer barrels.
Historian Jade Scott, of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, has uncovered the human and political depths behind Mary’s captivity through 57 recently decrypted letters, coded missives that reveal her as a strategist, an adept d...
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October 21, 2025 • 34 mins
Long before Shakespeare became a household name, there was Richard Burbage. As the first actor to play Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear, Burbage helped define what it meant to be a Shakespearean actor.
A commanding performer, he became one of early modern England’s first celebrities—celebrated for his emotional power and versatility, as well as his entrepreneurial savvy as an early theater owner.
In her new book "Richa...
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October 6, 2025 • 35 mins
Shakespeare’s plays are filled with unforgettable women—but too often, their voices are cut short. Ophelia never gets to defend herself. Gertrude never explains her choices. Lady Anne surrenders to Richard III in silence.
In her new book, She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said, acclaimed actor Dame Harriet Walter imagines what those characters might tell us if given the chance. Through original poems, Walter reimagin...
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September 22, 2025 • 40 mins
Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were both born in 1564, rising from working-class origins finding success in the new world of the theater. But before Shakespeare transformed English drama, Marlowe had already done so—with Tamburlaine the Great and the introduction of blank verse to the stage.
As Stephen Greenblatt argues in his new biography, Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Great...
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September 7, 2025 • 29 mins
You may know Al Letson as a journalist—he’s the host of the popular investigative podcast Reveal. Before that, he created and hosted the public radio show State of the Re:Union. But Letson is also an actor, writer, playwright, and poet. His play Julius X: A Re-envisioning of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare kicks off Folger Theatre's 2025-26 season.
Julius X isn’t an adaptation of Julius Caesar — it’s a new play...
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August 25, 2025 • 40 mins
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar feels urgently contemporary in Rosa Joshi’s new production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival—one of America’s largest and longest-running theater festivals, now in its 90th season. Staged in partnership with Seattle’s upstart crow collective, the production explores the threat of autocracy, drawing on global histories of dictatorship.
Performed entirely by women and nonbinary actors, Joshi’s Julius Cae...
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August 11, 2025 • 32 mins
250 years after her birth, Jane Austen is more popular than ever, with the publication of new editions of her novels and numerous new film adaptations in production. But what does it mean to read and edit Jane Austen today through the lens of colonialism, cartography, and race? Scholar Patricia A. Matthew, who recently edited new editions of three Austen novels, joins us to explore the ongoing fascination with Jane and share new re...
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July 28, 2025 • 41 mins
What if, instead of just watching Hamlet, you could step inside the prince’s mind?
A revelatory new audio production reimagines Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy as a first-person experience told through Hamlet’s POV. We only hear the scenes in which he appears—every soliloquy becomes an inner monologue, every whisper a voice in our ears. With stunning binaural sound design by Tony Award–winner Mikhail Fiksel and an intimate, close-mic...
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July 13, 2025 • 31 mins
Can reading King Lear help us rethink economic policy? Can Measure for Measure shape how we talk about justice, or Hamlet help us face grief? That’s the idea behind an ambitious project at Montreal’s McGill University called Reimagining Shakespeare, Remaking Modern World Systems.
Led by Laurette Dubé, professor emerita of management, and Paul Yachnin, professor of Shakespeare studies, the initiative brings together experts in econ...
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June 30, 2025 • 39 mins
When live performance shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen weren’t sure when—or if—they’d ever be onstage again. So, they turned to an unexpected venue: Grand Theft Auto Online, a sprawling, open-world video game best known for fast cars, chaotic and often criminal missions, and player-driven mayhem. Amid the game’s unpredictable violence, they decided to stage Hamlet—it would be the first ev...
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June 16, 2025 • 37 mins
Called “the finest actor of his generation,” Sir Simon Russell Beale has played just about everyone in Shakespeare’s canon—Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Falstaff, Malvolio, Iago—and most recently, Titus Andronicus, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In this episode, Beale reflects on the Shakespearean roles that have shaped his career and how his approach to them has evolved over time.
He shares what drew him to Titus, and how he found s...
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June 2, 2025 • 37 mins
In Shakespeare’s time, the actresses were boys—and for the most celebrated of them, fame came early but could end abruptly with a voice change. In this episode, author Nicole Galland joins us to talk about the world of boy players, young apprentices who performed women’s roles onstage in England before 1660.
Galland’s novel, Boy, follows one of these real-life members of Shakespeare’s company, Alexander “Sander Cooke,” and his fic...
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May 18, 2025 • 31 mins
Nan Z. Da, in her book The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear, finds unsettling parallels between Shakespeare’s play and 20th-century China under Mao Zedong.
Da, a literature professor at Johns Hopkins University, weaves together personal history and literary analysis to reveal how King Lear reflects—and even anticipates—the emotional and political horrors of authoritarian regimes. From public punishments to desperate displays of flatt...
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May 5, 2025 • 39 mins
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 p...
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April 21, 2025 • 35 mins
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.
Autho...
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April 6, 2025 • 33 mins
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 ...
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March 24, 2025 • 35 mins
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...
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