Shakespeare & Beyond

Did Shakespeare give much thought to how his works would survive after his death? Margreta de Grazia argues that his sonnets show he did.

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.

Chris Laoutaris explores the Shakespearean printing mystery behind the Pavier-Jaggard Quartos, published a few years before the First Folio.

Playwrights Malik Work and Karen Ann Daniels share more the creation of Our Verse in Time to Come and spring boarding off 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.

In this bilingual Hamlet, a Black and Latinx prince has his sense of identity fractured by the loss of his Black father.

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.

“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…

Shakespeare’s plays provide ample opportunity for dramatic deaths onstage, and 18th-century English actors like David Garrick transformed simple stage directions in the text into “stirring set-pieces,” as Laurence Senelick writes in the below excerpt from his new book, “The Final…

“Murphy may be the first person in history to subject laughter to such intensive and extensive study, at least from the perspective of a laughter professional,” writes Joy Wiltenburg about the 18th-century writer’s 500-page compilation of humor, in this excerpt…

See some of the Folger collection items that Charles and Camilla examined when they visited the Folger in 2005, including an early modern book on plants that got the prince’s attention.