Shakespeare & Beyond

Chaotic and ineffective government may be a problem in our current life, but it makes for excellent drama in the theater — and in William Shakespeare’s hands, excellent comedy as well.

“I have had a most rare vision…” Bottom’s words in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” echo the language of Spanish conquistadors describing Aztec Mexico.

We’ve put together a Shakespeare Halloween guide for you this year, with ideas for Halloween costumes and recommendations for what to watch, listen to, and read. Happy Halloween!

Voting was not a secret process in early modern England. The poll book shown here published the names of all the voters in London and which candidates and party they voted for in 1710.

John Tufts is an award-winning actor and the author of “Fat Rascals: Dining at Shakespeare’s Table,” a cookbook featuring over 150 authentic recipes straight out of Shakespeare’s plays. Here, he shares his recipe for a roast joint of mutton, inspired…

The excerpt begins: “Dante, poet and man, is obsessive. This is particularly true in the Latin meaning of the word: besiege or be besieged. Shakespeare’s protagonists sometimes are obsessive or besieged. Yet they can and do change. Leontes emerges from…

There are a ton of places to watch Shakespeare in October, both online and in-person. Here’s what the Folger’s theater partners are up to this month.

Shakespeare’s witches haven’t always terrified audiences. For a century and more – from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries – actors played these parts for laughs. During the period in which Shakespeare became “the Bard”, the witches in…

Take this quiz to see if you remember what comes after famous lines from Shakespeare plays like “All the world’s a stage” and “Parting is such sweet sorrow”.

One of the lasting achievements of the extended COVID quarantine will surely be an extraordinary archive of the complete works of William Shakespeare performed on Zoom by casts from around the world, under the umbrella title The Show Must Go…

Where do you turn for answers to pressing questions? You might glance at a weather forecast, the latest political polls, a book of theology or philosophy—or flip a coin. People living in the early modern period likewise had their ways…

Does a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Can we capture the perfumes of the past to savor in the present? This blog post looks at two 21st-century perfumes that try to market their scents by evoking early…