Love-in-idleness, a flower also called pansy or heartsease, plays an important role in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” as Marissa Nicosia explores.
Marissa Nicosia adapts an early modern recipe for heartsease cordial. This purple pansy syrup was used to “clear the heart” – to treat the chest and lungs or to reduce fever – but also for healing heartaches and other amorous ailments.
Austin Tichenor recommends an adventure novel starring a young Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, who uncover a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
Lolita Chakrabarti shares historical context about pioneering 19th-century Black actor Ira Aldridge, the subject of her play Red Velvet, including a notable detail about his funeral in Poland which she learned after she’d written the play.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom sings a tune about blackbirds to keep up his courage when he finds himself in strange circumstances.
A Folger fellow shares her research into the language of slavery in early modern England, and more specifically, the use of that language in the works of William Shakespeare.
