Shakespeare & Beyond

From rudeness to gross behavior, Ruth Goodman’s book “How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England” sheds some surprising light on what bad behavior really meant, including the reason that Shakespeare had Sampson threaten to “bite my thumb” at another character…

From the question “What are you?” (Countess Olivia) to “Tell my story” (Hamlet), Austin Tichenor looks at finding your identity and telling your story, through a decidedly Shakespearean lens.

Are there similarities between staging Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ and putting on the Shakespeare plays that are these companies’ bread and butter? We asked our theater partners.

A detailed but absurd decor chat with Lady Macbeth is one of Susan Harlan’s many hilarious design interviews with literary figures in her new book “Decorating a Room of One’s Own.”

Tracy Young, who had previously directed “The Winter’s Tale,” writes about the challenges of translating “The Winter’s Tale” for the Play on! project.

Enjoy a discussion led by Washington Post journalist Robert Costa, moderator of Washington Week, with Georgianna Ziegler, curator of Churchill’s Shakespeare, and Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre, exploring Shakespeare’s influences on Winston Churchill.

With Herbert Beerbohm Tree as the king, the four-minute silent movie “King John” (1899) is often called “the first Shakespeare film,” as Michael Anderegg explains. Watch the surviving one-minute fragment and learn more about its theatrical star.

We’ve got eight Shakespeare-related Christmas gift ideas from the Folger shop, most of them under $30 and some under $15, from books and jewelry to a bath duck and more.

Paul Glenshaw draws “The Merchant of Venice” bas-relief from the series by sculptor John Gregory at the Folger Shakespeare Library — and finds depictions of the same scene with some similar elements in the Folger collection.

Austin Tichenor suggests that “Twelfth Night” is the “Hamlet” of the comedies, dealing with loss, separation, and death and using some surprisingly similar elements — but in a far happier way.

Every month, we share a snapshot of Shakespeare in performance around America. What plays are onstage in November? We visit our theater partners to find out.

Interested in adding variety to your Thanksgiving dinner? Try this modernized 17th-century recipe for savory biscuits based on a manuscript in the Folger collection.