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Shakespeare & Beyond

Shakespeare & Beyond

The Shakespeare & Beyond blog features a wide range of Shakespeare-related topics: the early modern period in which he lived, the ways his plays have been interpreted and staged over the past four centuries, the enduring power of his characters and language, and more.

Holiday Festivities and Elizabethan Theater
Shakespeare and Beyond

Holiday Festivities and Elizabethan Theater

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Erika T. Lin studies early modern holidays and her work has yielded some surprising revelations—not only about the festivities themselves, but about the relationship between holidays and what we now think of as “theater.”

2024 Folger Holiday Gift Guide
Six colorful felt holiday ornaments on a beige background,: a Renaissance jester in red and green outfit with round gold tassels on hat, collar and bottom of top, and shoe tips. Next, the character Nick Bottom from Midsummer in brown tunic and lace-up sandals with a donkey head encircled with flowers and a Renaissance woman, Anne Hathaway, in a dark blue dress with gold stitching and mustard yellow sleeves; she is beside a Renaissance gentleman with bald head and brown hair on the sides wearing a dark blue doublet with lots of gold stitching and matching pumpkin pants, white stockings, and dark buckled shoes. He is Shakespeare. On the far right is a couple, Romeo in Renaissance short cape, elaborate doublet, dark pants tucked in dark boots, and Juliet, with long brown air, wearing a burgundy dress with gold details and an elaborate cream underskirt covered in gold embroidery.
Shakespeare and Beyond

2024 Folger Holiday Gift Guide

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Shakespeare & Beyond

We’ve got the perfect gift for everyone on your list in this guide to some of our favorites from the Folger Shop.

Teaching Shakespeare to GenZ
Shakespeare and Beyond

Teaching Shakespeare to GenZ

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Educator Jocelyn A. Chadwick looks at the opportunities for teaching Shakespeare in today’s classroom, encouraged by GenZ’s passion for connecting literature from the past with their own here and now, bringing in the music, movies, and even ads that shape their world, to create their own unique meaning.

“That holy feeling”: Al Pacino on looking for Shakespeare
Shakespeare and Beyond

“That holy feeling”: Al Pacino on looking for Shakespeare

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Author
Austin Tichenor

Austin Tichenor takes a look at Al Pacino’s new memoir, Sonny Boy. Pacino describes how central Shakespeare was to his development as a young actor.

The Reading List: Family Stories
Shakespeare and Beyond

The Reading List: Family Stories

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Author
emma poltrack

The end of the year brings feasts, celebrations, and family. Our reading list of Folger Book Club picks offers a wide range of ways to reflect on the ties that bind us.

What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters in November
Shakespeare and Beyond

What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters in November

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Explore what’s playing at our Shakespeare Theater Partners around the country this November.

Shakespeare's Most Adolescent Play
Shakespeare and Beyond

Shakespeare's Most Adolescent Play

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It may not surprise you to hear that Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s teenaged play but that might have surprised earlier readers who considered the play adolescent for other reasons.

Saving Prince Henry
Shakespeare and Beyond

Saving Prince Henry

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Though Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months, he looms large over English history. In a new biography, historian and journalist Dan Jones examines Henry’s life anew.

Bringing Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Operatic Heights
Shakespeare and Beyond

Bringing Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Operatic Heights

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Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello interviews director, Brenna Corner, about Verdi’s opera inspired by Macbeth.

What the Nurse Might Have Said
Shakespeare and Beyond

What the Nurse Might Have Said

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Acclaimed Shakespearean actor Harriet Walter reimagines what the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet might have said after Juliet’s death in an excerpt from She Speaks!.

Watch | A look at early modern "selfies" by calligrapher, artist, and writer Esther Inglis
Shakespeare and Beyond

Watch | A look at early modern "selfies" by calligrapher, artist, and writer Esther Inglis

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Enjoy a video from the Esther Inglis special exhibition, showing how early modrern calligrapher, artist, and writer Inglis’s self-portraits helped tell her story.

Staging Puerto Rican Culture: Speaking Spanish and English in Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare and Beyond

Staging Puerto Rican Culture: Speaking Spanish and English in Romeo and Juliet

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Author
Carla Della Gatta

Carla Della Gatta explores how bilingual staging methods help evoke Puerto Rican culture for the Capulet women in Folger Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet.

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