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
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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March 10, 2025 • 29 mins
How does Shakespeare’s King Lear resonate in a world facing climate catastrophe? Novelist Julia Armfield explores this question in Private Rites, a novel set in a near-future London reshaped by rising sea levels. Following three sisters grappling with their father’s death, Private Rites weaves together themes of inheritance, power, and familial wounds—echoing Shakespeare’s tragic monarch while carving out a distinctly modern, queer...
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February 23, 2025 • 34 mins
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...
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February 5, 2025 • 33 mins
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 ...
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January 22, 2025 • 31 mins
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.
Sh...
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January 7, 2025 • 33 mins
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...
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December 18, 2024 • 33 mins
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...
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December 12, 2024 • 35 mins
2024 has been the year of the iconic lovers Romeo and Juliet, and director Sam Gold has brought a bold new production of the timeless tragedy to Broadway. With a fresh, contemporary approach, Gold transforms Shakespeare’s classic love story into an immersive experience that features a dynamic young cast led by Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) and Kit Connor (Heartstopper) and an innovative score by Grammy-winning musician Jack Ant...
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November 25, 2024 • 44 mins
What happens when a king believes he rules by divine right yet loses the trust of his people through his tyrannical actions? In this episode, acclaimed historian Helen Castor brings us into the world that inspired Shakespeare’s most celebrated history plays.
Castor’s latest book, The Eagle and the Heart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, peels back the layers of history to reveal the human drama behind a deadly royal rivalry...
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November 19, 2024 • 36 mins
Forget dusty textbooks and silent classrooms—the Folger Shakespeare Library has released new teaching guides designed to make the Bard’s works more engaging, accessible, and inclusive than ever before. In this episode, Peggy O’Brien, the editor behind these guides, and teachers Deborah Gascon and Mark Miazga, co-authors of the lesson plans for Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth respectively, explore how the Folger Method transforms stud...
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November 5, 2024 • 32 mins
Can you love Shakespeare and be an antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper’s book The Great White Bard explores the language of race and difference in Shakespeare’s plays. Dr. Karim-Cooper also looks at the ways Shakespeare’s work became integral to Britain’s imperial project and its sense of cultural superiority.
But, for all this, Karim-Cooper is an unapologetic Shakespeare fan. It’s right there in the subtitle of her book: “How to Love ...
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October 22, 2024 • 33 mins
Shakespeare is often associated with tragedy, but did you know that he changed the genre? In this episode, Rhodri Lewis, professor of English at Princeton University and author of Shakespeare’s Tragic Art, explores how Shakespeare redefined tragedy in ways that still feel modern today. Through a close examination of plays like Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear, Lewis explains how Shakespeare shifted the traditional ...
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October 8, 2024 • 30 mins
Forget witches, broomsticks, and cauldrons bubbling over—when it came to real magic in Shakespeare’s time, most people turned to their local cunning folk. These magical practitioners wielded spells to cure illnesses, recover lost items, and even spark a bit of romance. Far from the dark, devilish image popularly associated with witchcraft, cunning folk were trusted members of society, providing magical services as casually as a mod...
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