Shakespeare & Beyond

In her new book “The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage,” Pamela Allen Brown explores the considerable impact of Italian divas on Shakespeare and other English playwrights. This excerpt looks at the character of Juliet.

While doing research in the Folger collection, Dennis Duncan encountered hundreds of indexes created by early modern readers. In this excerpt from his newly published book, “Index, A History of the,” Duncan describes the fascinating variety of reader indexes he…

Take the quiz to see if you can identify some of the Shakespeare characters who share names with characters in other plays.

As anyone who has read Shakespeare’s plays can attest, their content is not always very appropriate for children: brutal murders, bawdy jokes, incest, etc. Editions of Shakespeare’s plays that have been designed specifically for children often omit or smooth over…

While working on a dual biography of Brunhild and Fredegund, Shelley Puhak stumbled across a connection between these medieval queens and Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s comedies and romances are full of lovers. See if you can match each pair of lovers with the Shakespeare play in which they appear.

Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe may not be as famous as his contemporary William Shakespeare, but his death at age 29 was far more dramatic — an argument over a bill that led to a stabbing, with the killer successfully pleading…

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, much of the comedic conflict derives from the application of the nectar of a magic flower. Under its influence, the queen of the fairies (Titania) becomes enamored of a donkey, and, through a bit…

Charles Cattermole. A scene from The Merchant of Venice. 19th century. Folger ART Box C368.5 no.1 (size S) Italy is the setting most associated with Shakespeare’s comedies, providing layers of dramatic potential that Kent Cartwright explores in an excerpt from…

Folger ART File R667.3 no.7 copy 1 PHOTO (size S) Shakespeare’s plays are full of brothers and sisters. Test your knowledge by seeing if you can correctly identify these characters’ siblings. Siblings in Shakespeare’s Plays Shakespeare’s plays are full of…

Calling all book lovers! Some of our most popular #FolgerFinds posts on Instagram this year featured beautiful bindings of Shakespeare’s collected works or early editions of Shakespeare plays that may have slightly different plot elements than the versions we’ve come…

What were the most popular stories this year on the Shakespeare & Beyond blog? Posts about love, coffee, and Ian McKellen made the top five.