Research and discovery

Historian Jade Scott draws on hundreds of encrypted letters, including 57 recently unearthed letters in a French archive and decoded, to paint a vivid portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots in her new book, Captive Queen.

In Humans: A Monstrous History, Surekha Davies shows how our multi-millennial relationship with monsters has shaped the origins of the modern world and ideas about humanness and otherness.

In celebration of Black History Month, we’re sharing Shakespeare Unlimited podcast interviews, lectures, and blog posts with acclaimed Black artists, poets, scholars, and educators about Shakespeare through history.

For many creators in the fantasy genre, from books to shows to games, the action takes place in a distant past. Why is medievalism so often the default setting for fantasy and what does that say about us?

After 138 years, Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane—the first known opera by a Black American composer—is receiving its world premiere. Learn about this important American composer and how his magnum opus is being brought to life.

New research casts a more positive light on why Shakespeare’s father was fined for building a muckhill.

Mark the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission with a look at a fascinating Apollo 11 flight plan sheet that traveled to the Moon.

A Folger fellow shares her research into the language of slavery in early modern England, and more specifically, the use of that language in the works of William Shakespeare.

Richard Schoch examines the first published image of William Shakespeare’s birthplace from 1769, reflecting on the transformation of a humble home into a significant tourist site in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Recipes for plague-curing potions like “Doctor Burges’s remedy” are often found in household recipe books of Shakespeare’s time. Folger fellow Yann Ryan writes about the circulation of information and misinformation through these recipes.

Folger fellow Peter Radford explores the history of picturing women athletes from ancient Greece to early modern Europe, how these images can be hard to find and interpret, but also why they’re so valuable and compelling.

Celebrate Halloween and Shakespeare with the remarkable story of Macbeth’s “creepiest” word — a common, simple term whose unusual use in the play was identified by data analysis in 2014 and highlighted in a recent online column.