Inside Shakespeare's plays

What are today’s audiences to make of Isabella and her 16th-century quandary? Scholar Marissa Greenberg juxtaposes Shakespeare with more recent authors to illuminate “the enduring challenge of upholding ideas against often harsh realities.”

“Theaters are time machines, and Shakespeare knew it,” writes Austin Tichenor. “Only in the theater can people so persuasively journey from the present to another time and place. It’s an act of collective imagination.”

Shakespeare’s setting of 16th-century Vienna was a stand-in for his own London. Austin Tichenor writes that recent productions updated to the 20th century give fresh historical specificity to the play’s potentially distant and abstract ethical dilemmas.

Are you lily-livered? Try our Shakespearean insults quiz about some of the high points — or low points — in the plays.

A variety of collection items show mixed audience responses to the play, enough so that it has been described as a “problem play.” Explore responses—by a government, by a student, and by artists—over the centuries.

What were readers of Shakespeare thinking about as the United States was forming? Scholar Brandi K. Adams looks at a critical edition of Antony and Cleopatra published in 1776 and how our understanding of the plays builds off past readings.

From Hamlet to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and more: try out our quiz about Shakespeare’s plays within a play, when his characters put on shows of their own.

From Ellen Terry to Sir Ian McKellen, Shakespearean actors performing solo shows is a time-honored tradition. Austin Tichenor shares a wide-ranging sampling of one-person Shakespeare shows from the past century.

In Shakespeare’s Scholars, Sean Keilen explores one of the more comic parts from Hamlet, Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes, and why audiences, from Shakespeare’s time until quite recently, took the words of guidance quite seriously.

We all know that Shakespeare loved twins, but less talked about is how much he adored triplets. Shakespeare understood the power of three and deployed it, perhaps most unexpectedly, says Austin Tichenor, in the comedy As You Like It.

As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s festive comedies, but there are also heavier themes in the play. We asked Folger Director Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper for her take on Shakespeare’s beloved comedy.

In 1936, Britain’s first feature-length Shakespeare “talkie” premiered: As You Like It featuring Elisabeth Bergner and Laurence Olivier in his first Shakespeare role on screen. Explore the film’s press kits and study guides.