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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.

Where to Find Shakespeare in April
Shakespeare & Beyond

Where to Find Shakespeare in April

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Author
Ben Lauer
Find out how Shakespeare theaters across the United States are celebrating the Bard's birthday this year.
Better than laughing: Renaissance melancholy
Shakespeare & Beyond

Better than laughing: Renaissance melancholy

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Author
Mary Ann Lund
The most famous book about Renaissance melancholy, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), celebrates its four hundredth anniversary this year. Though it was published five years after Shakespeare’s death, it gathers together ideas about melancholy from antiquity right through to the seventeenth century.
Order It: Sonnet 98
hand holding a flower
Shakespeare & Beyond

Order It: Sonnet 98

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Shakespeare & Beyond
It's springtime, and Sonnet 98 is a wonderful seasonal selection from Shakespeare. Take this quiz to see if you can put the sonnet's 14 lines into their correct order.
Excerpt: 'Shakespeare and Lost Plays' by David McInnis
Lost Plays book cover
Shakespeare & Beyond

Excerpt: 'Shakespeare and Lost Plays' by David McInnis

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Shakespeare & Beyond
When it comes to the theatrical landscape of Shakespeare's London, there are the plays whose names we are familiar with — plays like Hamlet and Henry V — and then there are the plays that were being performed around the same time and that Shakespeare's audiences would have known well, but that are lost to us today. Read an excerpt from a new book about these plays.
‘In the spiced Indian air’: Trading coin and cloth in the empire of the Great Mughal
Map of India
Shakespeare & Beyond

‘In the spiced Indian air’: Trading coin and cloth in the empire of the Great Mughal

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Author
Lubaaba Al-Azami
The spiced air of India was the stuff of legend in Shakespeare’s England, and is brought to vivid life in this famous passage from "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." These were images which Shakespeare knew his audiences would understand, during a period in which England had begun its sea voyages to Asia in earnest, and the fabulous possibilities of directly accessing the merchandise of India were being realized for the first time.
“Therefore we marvel”: WandaVision’s Shakespearean echoes
WandaVision juxtaposed with Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare & Beyond

“Therefore we marvel”: WandaVision’s Shakespearean echoes

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Author
Austin Tichenor
Austin Tichenor reflects on the tension the WandaVision series creates between character and genre, reminding him of Shakespeare’s plays.
Recipe: A 17th-century potato pie with marrow and dates
potato pie
Shakespeare & Beyond

Recipe: A 17th-century potato pie with marrow and dates

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Author
Elizabeth DeBold
Sweet potato pies, a beloved staple of North American fall and winter cooking, are baked out of mashed or blended sweet potatoes mixed with condensed milk, eggs, and spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace, and allspice. Few Americans and Canadians would think of such a dish as traditionally English, yet many cookery books written in England during the seventeenth century show that English people made and enjoyed pies like this. We decided to try one of these recipes, found in the Folger collection, during our recent Pi Day celebration.
Why the Folger has two sculptures of Puck
Shakespeare & Beyond

Why the Folger has two sculptures of Puck

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Author
Erin Blake
Erin Blake tells the story of how there came to be two Puck sculptures at the Folger, after the original marble sculpture was damaged.
Lord what fools these mortals be: The story behind Brenda Putnam's statue of Puck
Shakespeare & Beyond

Lord what fools these mortals be: The story behind Brenda Putnam's statue of Puck

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Author
Erin Blake
How did the Folger Shakespeare Library’s “Puck” sculpture by Brenda Putnam (1890–1975) come to be? There is a story to tell…..
The Master of the Revels: Edmund Tilney
Shakespeare & Beyond

The Master of the Revels: Edmund Tilney

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Author
Nicole Galland
Author Nicole Galland gives Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels for Queen Elizabeth I, his proper due. She writes: “Because of Tilney, playwrights became more revered among the reading classes; because of Tilney, only certain playwrights’ works were greatly revered; because of Tilney, Shakespeare was chief among those playwrights. That he remains chief among playwrights is a testament to his genius, of course. But the fact that he was positioned to be recognized as such is largely due to Edmund Tilney.”
Where to find Shakespeare in March
Shakespeare & Beyond

Where to find Shakespeare in March

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Author
Ben Lauer
There are lots of places to watch and listen to Shakespeare online this March, especially for fans of “Julius Caesar” and “Hamlet.”
Translating Shakespeare’s plays into Persian
Shakespeare & Beyond

Translating Shakespeare’s plays into Persian

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond
Iranian professor and Shakespeare scholar Ali Salami has used the Folger Shakespeare’s freely available digital texts to translate almost all of the works of Shakespeare into Persian. Read a Q&A with Salami about his translation work.
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