Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Independent scholar Dennis McCarthy and Lafayette College English professor June Schlueter say they have discovered a major new source for Shakespeare’s Richard III, Henry V, Henry VI, Part II, and at least eight other plays. The scholarly world continues to investigate and debate these new claims, which, if proved true, would be a once-in-a-generation find. On this podcast episode, McCarthy and Schlueter discuss how they used plagiarism-detecting software to analyze a nearly-450-year-old unpublished manuscript called A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels by a man named George North, finding multiple instances of matches with passages in Shakespeare plays. Published March 20, 2018. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, Put Your Discourse into Some Frame, was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer.

Actor Derek Jacobi talks about his remarkable career, including advice he received from Richard Burton, a disappointing rejection by the Royal Shakespeare Company, sharing the stage with Laurence Olivier, performing King Lear in 2010, his collaborations with Kenneth Branagh, and a struggle with paralyzing stage fright that drove him away from the theater for two years in the 1980s. He was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. This is Part 2 of a two-part interview. Published March 6, 2018. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode “O, For A Muse Of Fire!”  was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer.

Renowned actor Derek Jacobi talks about the Shakespearean role for which he is best known, Hamlet. Beginning at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1957, Jacobi has acted this role on stage nearly 400 times, and as you can imagine, he’s devoted hours to thinking about Hamlet’s words, Hamlet’s motivations, and the best way to play the role. Derek Jacobi was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. This is the first of a two-part interview. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 20, 2018. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Do not saw the air with your hands, thus,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer.

Bernard Cornwell, a bestselling writer of historical fiction such as the Sharpe series, has turned to the world of the Elizabethan theater. His newest novel, Fools and Mortals, is a tale of love, intrigue, opulence, and violence, all narrated by William Shakespeare’s brother Richard. Bernard Cornwell was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 6, 2018. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Masters, Here Are Your Parts” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer.

Orson Welles is perhaps most famous for his panic-inducing radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds and the award-winning film Citizen Kane. For his entire life though, Welles's obsession was Shakespeare. He produced and starred in Shakespeare plays on Broadway and directed and starred in multiple versions of Shakespeare's work on film, including Chimes at Midnight. Our guest is Michael Anderegg, the author of Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 23, 2018. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “A Rescue, a Rescue!” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer.

Getting audiences interested in Romeo and Juliet might be easy. But what about those more unfamiliar Shakespeare plays? Here’s an insider’s take on marketing and promotion at America’s Shakespeare festivals and theaters. Our guests are Katie Perkowski, Director of Marketing at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama; Jeff Fickes, who is Communications Director at the Seattle Shakespeare Company; and Emma Corey, Director of Marketing and Communications at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, New York. All three are part of the Folger’s Theater Partnership Program. They are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 9, 2018. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “There is the Playhouse Now, There Must You Sit” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. For more information, show credits, and transcript: https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/marketing

Sixteenth-century theater companies used a variety of physical and sensual staging effects in their productions to create a full-body experience for playgoers: fireworks hissing and shooting across the stage, fake blood, fake body parts, the smell of blood and death, and more. Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern are the editors of a 2013 collection of essays, Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance, written by themselves and nine other theater historians. Tiffany Stern is a Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama with the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon. Farah Karim-Cooper is Head of Higher Education and Research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Tiffany and Farah are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published December 13, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, Awake Your Senses, was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited b

In 2015, on a state visit to Great Britain, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping called 17th-century Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu the “Shakespeare of the East,” and ever since, the Ministry of Culture for the People’s Republic has made a concerted push to elevate Tang to the status of Shakespeare. This episode explores just who Tang Xianzu was, and – more broadly – looks at what role Shakespeare plays in modern-day China. Our guests, Wei Feng and Alexa Alice Joubin, study the intersection of China and Shakespeare. They are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published November 29, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, "I See My Reputation is at Stake," was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We’d like to thank Dr. Ruru Li, Professor of Chinese Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds in Great Britain; writer

Shakespeare and his plays crop up in science fiction in a number of surprising places, from classic stories like Isaac Asimov’s “The Immortal Bard” to TV shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who. And it’s not just these more recent works: a production of Macbeth figures in Mary Shelley’s post-apocalyptic novel The Last Man, written in the 1820s. Our guest on this episode is Sarah Annes Brown, a professor of English Literature at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, and co-director of the university’s Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy. She’s writing a book that looks at representations of how Shakespeare’s plays are performed in the future. Sarah Brown is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published November 14, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, "I Shall Tell You a Pretty Tale," was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is

The author of the Patrick Melrose novels talks about adapting the story of one of Shakespeare’s most dysfunctional families for the Hogarth Shakespeare series. In Edward St. Aubyn’s version of “King Lear,” called “Dunbar,” Lear becomes a media mogul whose evil daughters have locked him away in a psychiatric hospital. Edward St. Aubyn is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published November 1, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “Th’ Untented Woundings of a Father’s Curse,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquardt at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California and Paul Reuest at Argot Studios in New York.

Even if you’re not a Shakespeare scholar, there are things you have learned about Shakespeare and his plays throughout your life – that it’s bad luck to say the name of “the Scottish play” or that Shakespeare hated his wife. Are any of these stories true? And whether they are or not, what do they tell us about previous eras, and our own? (This episode was first released on April 22, 2015.) From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. Emma Smith, a professor of English at Oxford University, is co-author, along with Laurie Maguire, of "30 Great Myths About Shakespeare." She was interviewed by Rebecca Sheir. This episode, “Thou Dost But Say 'Tis So”, was produced by Richard Pau.; Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from Nick Moorbath at Evolution Studios in Oxford, and Jonathan Charry at public radio station WAMU.

Two literary scholars discuss Shakespeare’s influence on the politics, history, and literary culture of East Africa. Edward Wilson-Lee, the son of white wildlife conservationists, spent his childhood in Kenya and now teaches Shakespeare at the University of Cambridge in England. Over the past few years he has spent extended periods back in Kenya, as well as in Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, researching his book, Shakespeare in Swahililand. Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, the renowned Kenyan playwright, novelist, dissident, and social activist, grew up in Kenya when it was still a British colony and is now a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent work is the memoir Birth of a Dream Weaver. Ngũgĩ and Edward were interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published October 3, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “The Language That I Have Lived In,” was produced by Richard Paul

How do actors breathe life into Shakespeare’s texts? How do they take language that’s centuries old and make it sound so real and immediate? Barry Edelstein, the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director at The Old Globe in San Diego, is one of the nation’s most experienced Shakespeare directors. Join him for an abbreviated version of Thinking Shakespeare Live!, his master class for acting that pulls back the curtain on the rehearsal room. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published September 19, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode Speak The Speech, I Pray You, As I Pronounced It was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from Justin Waldman, Associate Artistic Director at The Old Globe, and from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquardt at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Kurt Kohnen at KPBS in San Diego.

In his one-man show "Cry Havoc!" actor Stephan Wolfert, a US Army veteran, draws together lines in Shakespeare’s plays spoken by soldiers and former soldiers—including Macbeth, Othello, and Richard III. He puts those words to the task of explaining the toll that soldiering and war can take on the psyches of the men and women who volunteer for military duty. He is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published September 5, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “To the Battle Came He,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from Beth Emelson, Associate Artistic Producer of Folger Theatre; Eric Tucker, Artistic Director of Bedlam; Melissa Kuypers at NPR-West in Culver City, California; and from Ray Cruz at Hawaii Public Radio.

Next year, 2018, is the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. To honor him, we’re taking a look at the creation of "West Side Story," Bernstein’s most significant contribution to the world of Shakespeare. To help us out, we’ve invited in two guests with extensive knowledge. Mark Horowitz is archivist for the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress—nearly 400,000 items, including music manuscripts, letters, photographs, audio and video recordings, fan mail, and even some of the maestro’s old batons. Nigel Simeone has produced two books on Bernstein, "Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story" (2009) and "The Leonard Bernstein Letters" (2013). Nigel and Mark are interviewed by Neva Grant. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published August 23, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, "Juliet Appears Above, At A Window" was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Feringto

How and what did the Elizabethans eat? The kitchens of Shakespeare’s time looked very different from our kitchens today, and that’s not all that has changed when it comes to habits of diet, food preparation, and especially, the way food is served. In this episode, noted food historian Francine Segan leads listeners through a recipe for a salmon pie from the 1600s. She is interviewed by Neva Grant. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published August 8, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, "What Say You To A Piece Of Beef and Mustard?" was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer.

“Is it Shakespeare, or is it hip-hop?” British poet, rapper, and educator Kingslee James Daley, who goes by the stage name Akala, likes to recite a passage and then challenge his audience with this question. Since 2009, under the auspices of his “Hip-hop Shakespeare Company,” Akala has been going to community centers, prisons, and schools in immigrant and underserved communities, using the tools of hip-hop to spread an understanding of the relevance of Shakespeare’s poetry. Akala is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published July 25, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, "The Poet’s Pen Turns Them to Shapes," was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from Joe Philip at Covered PR, from Mariama Abudulai, and from Ryan Pate at the Dub Room Studio in Los Angeles.

'Will,' the new series on TNT, tells stories derived from what we often call Shakespeare’s “lost years”—the time before he made a name for himself as a writer. The series takes advantage of that gaping hole in Shakespeare’s biography to weave an intricate and exciting tale of art, strife, death, love, poetry, and violence in Elizabethan England. Executive producer/writer Craig Pearce and executive producer/director Shekhar Kapur tell us about adapting Shakespeare's biography—or lack thereof—into a new television show with a punk rock aesthetic. Pearce and Kapur are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published July 12, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “We'll Tell Tales” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. Special thanks Martine Resnick, Scott Radloff, Heather Crawford, and Kristin Boos at TNT; To

In 2012, the Donmar Warehouse presented an all-female production of "Julius Caesar," directed by Tony Award nominated director Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter. The production was set in a womens' prison, and was the first of a trilogy of all-female productions that the Guardian would call “one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years.” Director Phyllida Lloyd tells us about the productions, from conception to production. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published June 27, 2016. ©Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “We Are Governed With Our Mothers' Spirits” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from Chris Charles at the Sound Company in London.

Twenty-first-century wizardry meets the seventeenth-century kind in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of "The Tempest" with digital effects created by The Imaginarium, a performance-capture company that’s best known for movie and video game animations. RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran and Ben Lumsden, Imaginarium’s head of studio, are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published June 13, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “My So Potent Art,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had help from the RSC head of press, Philippa Harland; from Ed Walker at Sounding Sweet studios in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Marcia Caldwell and Melissa Kuypers at NPR-West in Los Angeles, and Chris Charles at The Sound Company in London. Enjoy the podcast? Please consider leaving a review.