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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.

Top Folger Finds on Instagram in 2021: Shakespeare books
Shakespeare and Beyond

Top Folger Finds on Instagram in 2021: Shakespeare books

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Shakespeare & Beyond

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…

Year in Review: Top Shakespeare & Beyond stories in 2021
Shakespeare and Beyond

Year in Review: Top Shakespeare & Beyond stories in 2021

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Shakespeare & Beyond

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

Top Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes of 2021
Shakespeare and Beyond

Top Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes of 2021

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Our top Shakespeare Unlimited podcast episodes from 2021 explore the British royal family, a Shakespeare-inspired novel, lost plays, and more. Happy listening! How We Hear Shakespeare’s Plays, with Carla Della Gatta In Shakespeare’s time, people talked about going to hear…

“The world unwinding”: Station Eleven, Shakespeare, and an artist’s-eye view of apocalypse
two men onstage hovering over a third man lying dead
Shakespeare and Beyond

“The world unwinding”: Station Eleven, Shakespeare, and an artist’s-eye view of apocalypse

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Austin Tichenor

During the covid-19 pandemic, two methods of escape for me have been Shakespeare and depictions of fictional catastrophes, so you can imagine my excitement when I learned that a novel that combines both — Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven…

Miniature models of the Globe—with Folger connections
man with a scale model of the Globe Theatre
Shakespeare and Beyond

Miniature models of the Globe—with Folger connections

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Morgan Ellison

There is a long tradition of attempting to reconstruct the 1599 Globe, the multi-level open-air playhouse where many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. It will always be difficult to determine various details about the 1599 Globe, which burned to…

Athena: How Shakespeare's plays invoke the Greek goddess of wisdom and battle strategy
Athena
Shakespeare and Beyond

Athena: How Shakespeare's plays invoke the Greek goddess of wisdom and battle strategy

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emma poltrack

We continue our “Shakespeare and Greek Myths” series with another major goddess of the Grecian pantheon, Athena. Also called Athene, Pallas, and Minerva (her Roman name), this patron of Athens was the deity devoted to wisdom, the law, and strategy…

What's Onstage at Shakespeare Theaters in December
Shakespeare and Beyond

What's Onstage at Shakespeare Theaters in December

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Ben Lauer

In December, many of our theater partners take a break from Shakespeare to celebrate the holidays with their communities! We reached out to them to hear about holiday productions including “Cinderella,” “The Gift of the Magi,” “A Christmas Carol,” “It’s Christmas, Carol!” and…

Excerpt: Learwife by J. R. Thorp
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt: Learwife by J. R. Thorp

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Picking up where Shakespeare’s King Lear ends, a new novel imagines the life of Lear’s wife, who in this telling has been banished for 15 years when she receives word of her family members’ deaths. Learwife by J.R. Thorp gives…

Such Sweet Thunder: The musical sonnets in Duke Ellington's Shakespeare suite
Shakespeare and Beyond

Such Sweet Thunder: The musical sonnets in Duke Ellington's Shakespeare suite

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Duke Ellington includes “musical sonnets” in his 12-song Shakespeare jazz suite, Such Sweet Thunder. Learn more about this 1957 milestone in the story of jazz and Shakespeare from an interview with Douglas Lanier.

Order It: Sonnet 29
Shakespeare and Beyond

Order It: Sonnet 29

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) is a famous example of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Try our quiz to see if you can put its lines in order.

Of Roys and kings: “The shadow of Succession”
Shakespeare and Beyond

Of Roys and kings: “The shadow of Succession”

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Austin Tichenor

Austin Tichenor explores the copious Shakespearean echoes in HBO’s Succession series, in which the Shakespearean actor Brian Cox plays a key role.

Aphrodite (Venus): The oft-invoked goddess of love
Shakespeare and Beyond

Aphrodite (Venus): The oft-invoked goddess of love

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emma poltrack

One of the figures that Shakespeare and his characters frequently invoke is Aphrodite, the goddess of love, often referred to by her Roman name, Venus, both in the plays and sonnets and in Shakespeare’s popular long poem, Venus and Adonis.…

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