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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.

Quiz: Which Shakespeare plays inspired these novels?
Shakespeare and Beyond

Quiz: Which Shakespeare plays inspired these novels?

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Can you identify which Shakespeare plays inspired these novels? Quiz: Which Shakespeare Plays Inspired These Novels? Given the title, author, and a brief note about the novel’s plot, see if you can identify the Shakespeare play it’s inspired by. Exit,…

The three most popular recipes from Before 'Farm to Table'
Cogs Biscuits
Shakespeare and Beyond

The three most popular recipes from Before 'Farm to Table'

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Shakespeare & Beyond

With the Folger’s four-year Before ‘Farm to Table’ project drawing to a close, we’re revisiting three of the most popular early modern recipes adapted by the project team and shared on the Shakespeare & Beyond blog. Before ‘Farm to Table’:…

“Freshly remembered”: Modern spins on Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech
actor Bill Pullman
Shakespeare and Beyond

“Freshly remembered”: Modern spins on Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech

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Austin Tichenor

Actor Bill Pullman in a 2021 ad for Budweiser As proof that Shakespeare continues to inspire, one need look no further than a beer commercial that aired this past Fourth of July. Budweiser hired actor Bill Pullman to give a…

What lost Turk plays can tell us about Shakespeare’s England and about ourselves
Osman II
Shakespeare and Beyond

What lost Turk plays can tell us about Shakespeare’s England and about ourselves

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Murat Öğütcü

The study of extant early modern plays is a painstaking business that moves along a fine line of conjectural and historicist study. With the advent of the Lost Plays Database in 2009, scattered primary and secondary materials have been brought…

Folger Finds: A carved oak casket for holding a Shakespeare First Folio
Shakespeare and Beyond

Folger Finds: A carved oak casket for holding a Shakespeare First Folio

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Casket, carved in an Elizabethan style 1866.Imagine buying a book and having the queen of England give you a special case in which to store it! That’s what happened after wealthy heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts purchased a Shakespeare First Folio in…

Excerpt: Shakespeare and Latinidad - "In a Shakespearean Key" by Caridad Svich
Caridad Svich and Shakespeare and Latinidad book cover
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt: Shakespeare and Latinidad - "In a Shakespearean Key" by Caridad Svich

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Caridad Svich. Photo by Jody Christopherson. Playwright and translator Caridad Svich writes about encountering A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a child growing up in a Cuban-American community in Florida: “In Shakespeare, before he was a writer on my syllabus in…

Five Folger Finds for beating the heat and cooling off this summer
swimming
Shakespeare and Beyond

Five Folger Finds for beating the heat and cooling off this summer

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Is the July heat getting to you? Here are five items from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection that are just right for summertime. 1. A 1699 guide to swimming “In the seventeenth century, swimming was viewed not so much as…

What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters this summer
Shakespeare and Beyond

What's onstage at Shakespeare theaters this summer

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Ben Lauer

Summer Shakespeare is back. Take a look at the plays that the Folger’s theater partners have onstage this July and August.

Quiz: It’s a Henry play. But which one?
Henry images
Shakespeare and Beyond

Quiz: It’s a Henry play. But which one?

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Shakespeare & Beyond

(left-right) Mr. Lewis Waller as Henry V (ca. 1910); Peter Crook as King Henry IV, Folger Theatre, 2019, C. Stanley Photography; Zach Appelman as Henry V, Folger Theatre, 2013. Photo by Scott Suchman; Edwin Booth as King Henry VIII. Shakespeare…

Folger Finds: Photographs of Hamlet in Japan
Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet
Shakespeare and Beyond

Folger Finds: Photographs of Hamlet in Japan

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Shakespeare & Beyond

In a recent post on the Folger’s Collation blog, assistant curator Elizabeth DeBold shared a small set of photographs, newly added to the Folger collection, that document a 1933 Japanese production of Hamlet: These five photos provide a glimpse of…

Richard III and disability: Excerpt - "Unfixable Forms" by Katherine Schaap Williams
Shakespeare and Beyond

Richard III and disability: Excerpt - "Unfixable Forms" by Katherine Schaap Williams

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Shakespeare & Beyond

What did Richard III and his disability represent to Shakespeare’s original audiences? And how has this Shakespeare villain shaped the field of early modern disability studies today? Katherine Schaap Williams takes a closer look at these questions in the below…

“This is the English, not the Turkish court”: Ottomans in Shakespeare’s Henriad
The generall historie of the Turkes
Shakespeare and Beyond

“This is the English, not the Turkish court”: Ottomans in Shakespeare’s Henriad

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Aisha Hussain

In Shakespeare’s Henriad – Richard II (1595), Henry IV Part I (1596), Henry IV Part II (1597), and Henry V (1599) – English Christian characters frequently employ negative Turkish tropes when criticizing each other’s corrupt political agendas. However, these tropes differ from…

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