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Shakespeare & Beyond

Revisit the top five Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes of 2017

from the Akala podcast episodeWe covered a lot in our podcast about Shakespeare this year, from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story to Tracy Chevalier’s retelling of Othello to the Globe to Globe Hamlet tour. Here are the top five Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes from 2017, ranked by number of listens:

1. Shakespeare and Marlowe: Attributing ‘Henry VI’ Authorship

Advances in computer science have enabled scholars to find, with much greater certainty, the fingerprints that we think tell us definitively who wrote which plays and even who wrote which acts within the plays, throwing open the idea that Shakespeare was a solo genius in charge of it all. Folger Director Michael Witmore and Eric Rasmussen discuss the decision by the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare (published by Oxford University Press) to list Christopher Marlowe as the co-author of the three Henry VI plays.

2. Juliet’s Answer

Starting in the 1930s, people began sending letters asking for advice on love and romance to Verona, Italy—addressed to Juliet. In 2014, a lovelorn Canadian high school teacher traveled to Verona over summer vacation to volunteer as one of “Juliet’s secretaries.” The experience changed his life—and his perspective on Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers. Glenn Dixon shares stories from his 2017 memoir, Juliet’s Answer.