Skip to main content
Shakespeare & Beyond

Shakespeare & Beyond

The Shakespeare & Beyond blog features a wide range of Shakespeare-related topics: the early modern period in which he lived, the ways his plays have been interpreted and staged over the past four centuries, the enduring power of his characters and language, and more.

Shakespeare's roles in the Caribbean
Shakespeare and Beyond

Shakespeare's roles in the Caribbean

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

Shakespeare is woven into the culture of the British Caribbean, with a special emphasis on Caliban and The Tempest–but does he reflect the colonial past, influence anti-colonial authors, or both? Scholars Giselle Rampaul and Barrymore A. Bogues traced his complex…

Quiz: Which characters use foreign words and phrases?
Shakespeare and Beyond

Quiz: Which characters use foreign words and phrases?

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

Take this quiz to see if you can tell which characters in the plays used foreign words and phrases, including the famous three-word Latin question, “Et tu, Brutè?”

What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters in September
Shakespeare and Beyond

What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters in September

Posted
Author
Ben Lauer

This September, there’s still time to catch the final performances of some of this summer’s outdoor Shakespeare productions. Plus, watch performances online from the American Players Theatre, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and Shakespeare in…

Eating plants in the early modern world
Shakespeare and Beyond

Eating plants in the early modern world

Posted
Author
Julia Fine

Explore turmeric, cinnamon, mint, and sugar to learn more about plants as food, and what they reveal about the early modern age and today.

Excerpt: 'Shakespearean' by Robert McCrum
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt: 'Shakespearean' by Robert McCrum

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

When Robert McCrum began his recovery from a life-changing stroke in the 1990s, he discovered that the only words that made sense to him were snatches of Shakespeare. The First Folio became an endless source of inspiration for “journeys of…

Order It: "If music be the food of love" from Twelfth Night
Violets
Shakespeare and Beyond

Order It: "If music be the food of love" from Twelfth Night

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

“If music be the food of love, play on.” Take this quiz to see if you can correctly order the lines of the opening speech of Twelfth Night, with its memorable reference to a bank of violets.

Speaking what we feel: Shakespeare’s plague plays
Shakespeare and Beyond

Speaking what we feel: Shakespeare’s plague plays

Posted
Author
Austin Tichenor

How do Shakespeare’s plays reflect a life filled with plague outbreaks, asks Austin Tichenor — and do we see his plays in new ways now?

Richard III: My kingdom for a horse
Shakespeare and Beyond

Richard III: My kingdom for a horse

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

“My kingdom for a horse!” A titanic villain in Shakespeare’s history plays, Richard III departs the stage and this life at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Mark the battle’s anniversary with these posts and podcast episodes.

Excerpt – ‘All's Well’ by Mona Awad
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt – ‘All's Well’ by Mona Awad

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

Mona Awad’s new, darkly funny novel All’s Well tells the story of a theater professor who is convinced that staging All’s Well That Ends Well will remedy all of her woes. Along the way, she meets three strange benefactors with…

Excerpt - Shakespeare and Forgetting - by Peter Holland
Shakespeare and Forgetting cover
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt - Shakespeare and Forgetting - by Peter Holland

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

Shakespeare and Forgetting by Peter Holland considers how Shakespeare explores the concept of forgetting and how forgetting functions in performance. The excerpt below focuses on the character of Sir John Falstaff, who appears in several of Shakespeare’s plays. Why do…

Shakespeare's late romances on summertime stages
Shakespeare and Beyond

Shakespeare's late romances on summertime stages

Posted
Author
Ben Lauer

What’s behind the unusual number of Shakespeare’s romances onstage this summer? We talked to the artists behind them to find out.

Folger Finds: A Shakespeare quilt
Shakespeare quilt
Shakespeare and Beyond

Folger Finds: A Shakespeare quilt

Posted
Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

When you picture what’s in the Folger collection, many people imagine books and manuscripts from the early modern period — and we do have a lot of those! But the Folger also collects a variety of Shakespeare-related objects, including this…

1 16 17 18 19 20 69