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Shakespeare & Beyond

The 5 most popular Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes of 2016: Othello, food, magic, religion, and the First Folio

1. Othello and Blackface

This podcast episode, which deals with race, Othello, and how the Elizabethans portrayed blackness onstage, offers a startling, new interpretation of Desdemona’s handkerchief that is changing the way scholars understand the play.

Our guests are Ayanna Thompson, Professor of English at George Washington University and a Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America, and Ian Smith, Professor of English at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

2. The Food of Shakespeare’s World

This episode shifts slightly from our usual intense focus on Shakespeare. Instead, we are talking about the world that he inhabited, or at least a small part of that world: the kitchen. Kitchens, and what goes on in them, come up in Shakespeare’s plays with surprising frequency, whether directly or, more often, obliquely.

Our guest is Wendy Wall, an English professor at Northwestern University and director of the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

Comments

Very nice article. I love all these plays especially the magic. Thanks for sharing this interesting information with us.

Adam Axford — September 25, 2019