Shakespeare & Beyond

We’ve got five Shakespeare-themed Christmas gift ideas for you, selected from the Folger shop and all under $20, from games to artwork and more.

Families share Shakespeare together in so many ways, such as watching his plays, quoting familiar lines, or throwing a Shakespeare birthday party.

Every month, we share a snapshot of Shakespeare in performance around America. Let’s check in with our theater partners with Shakespeare plays onstage in November and December.

In this pumpkin pie recipe from the late 1600s, you peel and slice the pumpkin into thin wedges, dipping them in egg before frying them. Apples, raisins, currants, and sherry also get added to the pie.

Books on manners became so popular during the Elizabethan period that it was only a matter of time before someone satirized them.

“Manners maketh man” was the motto of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Would your own table manners pass inspection?

Shakespeare’s plays are full of battles dominated by men, but one of his most compelling speeches about the life of a soldier comes from a woman: Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part 1, speaking to her husband, Hotspur.

When Hamlet first encounters his father’s ghost, the Danish prince’s reactions reflect Shakespeare’s understanding of the theological differences between early modern Catholics and Protestants regarding the spiritual realm, says David Scott Kastan.

Transparencies, popular in the late 1700s, use back-lighting to reveal a secret image. See one from the Folger collection that reveals Shakespeare’s ghost in Westminster Abbey.

Illustrated editions of the Complete Works would have been the first encounter with Shakespeare that many Victorian readers would have had.

The Roman distaste of powerful women, their misunderstanding of the Egyptian way of life, and Octavian’s political need to consolidate his rise to dictator created our image of Cleopatra today.

The tricks of this pop-up Shakespeare book, written by the Reduced Shakespeare Company and illustrated by Jennie Maizels, are a perfect way to express the theatricality of Shakespeare’s plays.