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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.

Order It: Juliet’s “What’s in a name?” speech
Shakespeare and Beyond

Order It: Juliet’s “What’s in a name?” speech

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Juliet’s famous balcony speech begins with “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” But what comes next? Take this quiz to see if you can correctly order the lines of the speech.

The irony of the American Moor
Shakespeare and Beyond

The irony of the American Moor

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Keith Hamilton Cobb

‘American Moor’ playwright and actor Keith Hamilton Cobb writes about speaking back to Shakespeare, White American Theater, and frameworks of privilege.

Your Guide to Streaming Shakespeare this Summer
Shakespeare and Beyond

Your Guide to Streaming Shakespeare this Summer

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Ben Lauer

Wondering where you’ll find Shakespeare this summer? We’ve gathered a wealth of online performances, conversations, and programs from the Folger’s theater partners that you can check out in July and August.

Excerpt – ‘Lady Romeo’ by Tana Wojczuk
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt – ‘Lady Romeo’ by Tana Wojczuk

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Shakespeare & Beyond

American actress Charlotte Cushman was a 19th-century theatrical icon, known for playing traditionally male roles like Romeo and Hamlet. She was not the only actress of her time to play these parts, but her style was uniquely assertive and athletic.…

How to control dreams and avoid nightmares… and the ghost visitations in ‘Richard III’
Shakespeare and Beyond

How to control dreams and avoid nightmares… and the ghost visitations in ‘Richard III’

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Shakespeare & Beyond

  Richard III, act 5 scene 3, in the tent, Richard asleep, ghosts of persons he had murdered. Painted by J. Opie, R.A. ; engraved by W. Sharp. Published 1794. Folger Shakespeare Library. Nightmares and ominous dreams are used to…

Romeo and Juliet: Is Shakespeare’s famous love story actually a play about violence?
Shakespeare and Beyond

Romeo and Juliet: Is Shakespeare’s famous love story actually a play about violence?

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Tybalt (Rex Daugherty) duels Mercutio (Brad Koed), with Benvolio (Aaron Bliden) looking on. Romeo and Juliet, Folger Theatre, 2013. Casey Kaleba was the fight director. Photo by Teresa Wood. Is Romeo and Juliet a play about love? Well yes, but…

“Jumping o’er times:” Visiting great Shakespeare performances past
Shakespeare and Beyond

“Jumping o’er times:” Visiting great Shakespeare performances past

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Austin Tichenor

  Cyril Walter Hodges. The fire at the Globe, 1613 (illustration for: Shakespeare’s Theatre, 1964). Folger Shakespeare Library. While William Shakespeare never wrote what we might think of as a science-fiction play, he knew intuitively that the theatre — more…

The political insect: Bees as an early modern metaphor for human hierarchy
Shakespeare and Beyond

The political insect: Bees as an early modern metaphor for human hierarchy

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Haylie Swenson

Shakespeare and his contemporaries were fascinated with bees as metaphors for human behavior, especially when it came to politics and government.

Excerpt ⁠— Keith Hamilton Cobb’s ‘American Moor’: An introduction by Kim Hall
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt ⁠— Keith Hamilton Cobb’s ‘American Moor’: An introduction by Kim Hall

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Shakespeare & Beyond

At the heart of Keith Hamilton Cobb’s one-man play American Moor are explorations of blackness, racial dynamics in American theater, “ownership” of Shakespeare, and the subtext of Othello. He has performed the play across the United States, including an off-Broadway…

Up Close: Shakespeare's First Folio
First Folio title page
Shakespeare and Beyond

Up Close: Shakespeare's First Folio

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Get an up-close look at the title page of one of the Folger’s 82 First Folios and learn more about it by clicking through captions that zoom in on different parts of the page.

Order It: Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy
a man thinking
Shakespeare and Beyond

Order It: Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy

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Shakespeare & Beyond

“To be or not to be” – do you know what comes after? This quiz challenges you to drag and drop the lines of Hamlet’s famous speech into the correct order.

“Ambiguous and dangerous meat:” Herpetophagy in the early modern world
Newts
Shakespeare and Beyond

“Ambiguous and dangerous meat:” Herpetophagy in the early modern world

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Michael Walkden

Why was herpetophagy (eating reptiles and amphibians) linked with madness in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”? Unpack the cultural anxieties involved in early modern English encounters with unfamiliar dietary norms.

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