Shakespeare Unlimited podcast
William Shakespeare and his works are woven throughout our global culture, from theater, music, and films to new scholarship, education, amazing discoveries, and more. In our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, Shakespeare opens a window into topics ranging from the American West, to the real history of Elizabethan street fighting, to interviews with Shakespearean stars. As you’ll hear, he turns up in surprising places, too—including outer space. Join us for a “no limits” tour of the connections between Shakespeare, his works, and our world.
Elizabethan Medicine
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 55 Being a patient in Shakespeare’s time was an adventure. You might be told to drink liquid gold or syrup of violets. You might undergo a violent purgation to take the bad humors out of your body.…
Keith Hamilton Cobb on American Moor
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 54 Othello is the story of a tragic murder and suicide involving a dark-skinned general and his aristocratic, white-skinned bride. Who should direct it? Who’s “allowed” to? What if, say, a white director and the actor he’s…
The Food of Shakespeare's World
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 53 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…
Recreating the Boydell Gallery
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 52 In the decades after Shakespeare’s death, his works temporarily fell out of favor. His renaissance is usually credited to actor-manager David Garrick, who staged a Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769. Riding Garrick’s coattails, an artistic entrepreneur named…
Worlds Elsewhere
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 51 In 2012, Andrew Dickson watched a Shakespeare play in London that set him off on a quest. When it ended, he had traveled to Poland, Germany, India, China and all across the United States. He chronicled…
Othello and Blackface
On the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, Ian Smith and Ayanna Thompson talk about Elizabethan modes of blackface—which included covering a performer’s body with dyed cloth to simulate blackness—and how Smith’s insight changes how we understand Othello.
Shakespeare and Religion
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 49 The period when Shakespeare was writing was one torn by disagreements over the proper method of observing Christianity in England. Protestantism was at war with Catholicism and the Church of England often employed coercion and even…
Shakespeare in Africa
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 48 When the British came to colonize the African continent in the middle of the 1800s, they brought Shakespeare with them. But after the British left power, it was often Shakespeare who leaders in African countries summoned…
Creating Shakespeare's First Folio
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 47 We likely wouldn’t have half of Shakespeare’s plays without the First Folio of 1623. Imagine a world without Macbeth, Twelfth Night, or Julius Caesar. Our guest on this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited is Emma Smith, a…
Kill Shakespeare Comics
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 46 Imagine a comic book series in which Shakespeare’s most popular characters team up in rival, warring camps bent on seizing control of the kingdom that is the world of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s called Kill Shakespeare,…
Reduced Shakespeare Company
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 45 Discovered in a treasure-filled parking lot in Leicester, England, an ancient manuscript proves to be the long lost first play by none other than the young William Shakespeare from Stratford. That’s the premise of the latest…
Inside the Folger Conservation Lab
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 44 The Folger is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, and the crown jewels of that collection are the 82 First Folios. To celebrate 400 years of Shakespeare, eighteen of these rare books are traveling the country throughout…