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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.

Your guide to streaming Shakespeare in June
Shakespeare and Beyond

Your guide to streaming Shakespeare in June

Posted
Author
Ben Lauer

Check out performances, conversations, classes, and podcasts available online in June from Shakespeare theaters all across the country.

Losing the name of action: Hamlet reconsidered
Shakespeare and Beyond

Losing the name of action: Hamlet reconsidered

Posted
Author
Austin Tichenor

Photograph by Lizzie Caswall Smith of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet. Folger Shakespeare Library. During this global pandemic, when the whole world is quarantined to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Hamlet seems like a character perfectly suited to…

Owls in the early modern imagination: Ominous omens and pitiable sages
Screech owl
Shakespeare and Beyond

Owls in the early modern imagination: Ominous omens and pitiable sages

Posted
Author
Haylie Swenson

Conrad Gessner. Icones animalium quadrupedum. 1560. Folger Shakespeare Library. Owls were bad omens for Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The general of the French forces, facing an English emissary in Henry VI, Part 1, calls him “Thou ominous and fearful owl…

The dinner table as classroom: Home-schooling gone wrong in 'The Taming of the Shrew'
The Taming of the Shrew
Shakespeare and Beyond

The dinner table as classroom: Home-schooling gone wrong in 'The Taming of the Shrew'

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Author
David B. Goldstein

Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew showcases one of the earliest and thorniest examples of teaching in a home environment—thorny both because of the way pedagogy in the play is full of cynicism and brutality, and because, on the…

How to think like a sonnet, or, fourteen ways of looking around a room
A jeweled binding for Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare and Beyond

How to think like a sonnet, or, fourteen ways of looking around a room

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Author
Scott Newstok

A sonnet packs a lot of meaning into a tiny space. Here are fourteen ways (one for each line) of approaching Shakespeare’s most well-known poems.

Your guide to streaming Shakespeare in May
Actors arrayed in a Zoom screen.
Shakespeare and Beyond

Your guide to streaming Shakespeare in May

Posted
Author
Ben Lauer

Suddenly, there’s a lot of Shakespeare available online. Here are our tips for exploring the wealth of films, Zoom readings, online classes, and more in the month of May.

A history of Theatre Royal Haymarket and its struggle to break through London's restrictions on Shakespeare
Haymarket theater
Shakespeare and Beyond

A history of Theatre Royal Haymarket and its struggle to break through London's restrictions on Shakespeare

Posted
Author
Alexandra E. LaGrand

William Capon. Theatre Royal Haymarket. August 1803. Folger Shakespeare Library. During a time when performing Shakespeare in London was a legal right belonging only to certain theaters, the Haymarket theater’s rise to greatness is directly linked to its struggle to…

Quiz: Match Shakespeare characters with costume designs
Costume design
Shakespeare and Beyond

Quiz: Match Shakespeare characters with costume designs

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

We’ve selected some costume designs from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection, and your challenge is to determine which Shakespeare characters they depict. Pay attention to small details that will give you clues! Many of the designs are watercolors from the…

Living through the plague times - Excerpt: 'Death By Shakespeare' by Kathryn Harkup
book cover
Shakespeare and Beyond

Living through the plague times - Excerpt: 'Death By Shakespeare' by Kathryn Harkup

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

What would it have been like to live through the plague outbreaks of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? And what insight does that give us into the mentions of plague in Shakespeare’s plays? Kathryn Harkup has looked at the science…

Sonnets & Chill: What did Shakespeare’s audiences do when the theaters were closed?
One person reading a letter to another person with a dog
Shakespeare and Beyond

Sonnets & Chill: What did Shakespeare’s audiences do when the theaters were closed?

Posted
Author
Austin Tichenor

Speed reading Launce’s letter : / J. Gilbert ; W. Thomas, sc. 19th century. Folger Shakespeare Library. ART File S528t7 no.10 (size XS)All right, enough. We’ve all heard how super-productive William Shakespeare was when the plague shut down his theaters:…

Hares, conies, and rabbits: The hunted and the melancholy
picture of a cony
Shakespeare and Beyond

Hares, conies, and rabbits: The hunted and the melancholy

Posted
Author
Haylie Swenson

Edward Topsell. The historie of foure-footed beastes. 1607. Folger Shakespeare Library. STC 24123 Copy 2. When, in Henry IV, Part II, Bardolph calls his page a “whoreson upright rabbit,” he’s not exactly thinking of the animal we now know as…

Share Your Shakespeare: Highlights from our 2020 Shakespeare's Birthday celebration
children performing a scene from Shakespeare
Shakespeare and Beyond

Share Your Shakespeare: Highlights from our 2020 Shakespeare's Birthday celebration

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

For Shakespeare’s birthday this year, the Folger Shakespeare Library partnered with the Royal Shakespeare Company to throw a virtual birthday party for Shakespeare, inviting people all around the world to #ShareYourShakespeare. Fans responded by reciting Shakespeare lines, staging scenes, striking…

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