Shakespeare & Beyond

Excerpt: "King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations"
“King Lear is about insiders who with terrible suddenness are shoved outside, and what they learn or don’t learn from finding themselves positioned there,” writes Arthur Frank.

Excerpt: "Shakespeare and University Drama in Early Modern England" by Daniel Blank
Daniel Blank writes about Shakespeare’s presence within the early modern university sphere.

Quiz: Deaths in Shakespeare plays
Lots of characters die in Shakespeare’s plays, sometimes in quite violent and graphic ways. Test your knowledge by taking our quiz.

Excerpt: "Shakespeare without a Life" by Margreta de Grazia
Did Shakespeare give much thought to how his works would survive after his death? Margreta de Grazia argues that his sonnets show he did.

Excerpt: "Richard III's Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity"
The disabled body of Richard III, a historical English king and one of Shakespeare’s most iconic villains, is the focus of a recent book by Jeffrey R. Wilson.

Excerpt: "Shakespeare's Book" by Chris Laoutaris
Chris Laoutaris explores the Shakespearean printing mystery behind the Pavier-Jaggard Quartos, published a few years before the First Folio.

Q&A with "Our Verse in Time to Come" director Vernice Miller

Q&A: "Our Verse in Time to Come" playwrights Malik Work and Karen Ann Daniels
Playwrights Malik Work and Karen Ann Daniels share more the creation of Our Verse in Time to Come and spring boarding off Shakespeare.

Excerpt: "White People in Shakespeare"
White People in Shakespeare examines what part Shakespeare played in the construction of a “white people” and how his work has been enlisted to define and bolster a white cultural and racial identity.

Q&A: Reynaldo Piniella and Emily Lyon on their bilingual Hamlet
In this bilingual Hamlet, a Black and Latinx prince has his sense of identity fractured by the loss of his Black father.

Q&A: Lauren Gunderson on her new play, A Room in the Castle, about the women of Hamlet
In anticipation of the staged reading of A Room in the Castle at Folger Theatre’s 2023 Reading Room Festival, Lauren Gunderson reflects on the play’s creation and inspiration.
Excerpt - "Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne" by Katherine Rundell
“Spiritually speaking, many of us confronted with the thought of death perform the psychological equivalence of hiding in a box with our knees under our chin: Donne hunted death, battled it, killed it, saluted it, threw it parties.” Read more…