Shakespeare, in the original Klingon
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). Directed by Nicholas Meyer. Shown from left: David Warner (as Chancellor Gorkon), Christopher Plummer (as General Chang), William Shatner (as Captain James T. Kirk), Walter Koenig, Leonard Nimoy (as Captain Spock), Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley,…
Reading ahead for "Will & Jane"
As you’ve seen on this blog already, the next Folger exhibition, Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity (August 6 to November 6), will be a fascinating look at the posthumous celebrities of William Shakespeare and Jane…
Charlotte Cushman, an American star
Thomas Sully. Charlotte Cushman. Oil on canvas, 1843. As we celebrate Shakespeare in 2016, it’s also time to mark some other dates on the calendar. This Saturday, July 23, 2016, is the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Cushman’s birth. Cushman was among the…
Portraits in Hamlet: ‘Look here upon this picture, and on this’
One of the oldest theatrical legends about Shakespeare is that he played the ghost in Hamlet. We know that Shakespeare was both an actor and a playwright, but we have no idea whether he acted this small, but memorable role.…
Hamlet wasn't always the prince with the common touch
When we think about Shakespeare on the stage we usually imagine two different historical moments: ‘then’ and ‘now’. ‘Then’ is Shakespeare’s lifetime, when Richard Burbage, the original Hamlet, first spoke ‘To be or not to be’ from the stage of…