Inside Shakespeare's plays

A century after Shakespeare’s death, his words were in danger of being forgotten. Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth reveal how the Shakespeare Ladies Club rescued Shakespeare’s plays and made him the cultural icon he is today.

Is Shakespeare still Shakespeare even if every word is changed? Author and translator Daniel Hahn dives into the challenges and rewards of translating Shakespeare—exploring not only what is lost in translation, but also what is gained.

What happens when a Shakespeare play is made up in real time? The ISC creates fully unscripted performances from a single audience prompt—blending poetry, comedy, and spontaneity into a play that’s never the same twice.

Acclaimed actor Adjoa Andoh shares how “swinging the lens” in both Bridgerton and Shakespeare reveals new perspectives on power, identity, and belonging, inviting audiences to see familiar stories in radically different ways.

Womersley shares how tragedies like Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear place audiences inside difficult moral dilemmas, inviting us to wrestle with enduring questions about identity, power, and what it means to do the right thing.

Shakespeare’s plays are full of unforgettable women, but too often their voices are cut short. In She Speaks!, acclaimed actor Harriet Walter imagines what they might tell us if given the chance in original poems that deepen their stories.

A six-episode podcast drops you inside Hamlet from the prince’s POV. Director Jeremy McCarter explains how 21st-century technology unlocked a fresh take on Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Darren Freebury-Jones explores the ways in which Shakespeare reshaped the works of contemporaries like John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, and Christopher Marlowe into something distinctly his own.

What happens when a king loses his people’s trust? Historian Helen Castor delves into the 14th century drama behind Richard II’s fall and Henry IV’s rise, the events that inspired Shakespeare’s celebrated history plays.

Discover how the Folger’s new teaching guides make Shakespeare’s works more engaging, accessible, and relevant, with strategies for teaching the plays, tackling topics like race and gender, and meeting the needs of today’s students.

Explore how Shakespeare reshaped the tragic form with complex characters and self-deception. Rhodri Lewis dives into the evolution of Shakespearean tragedy, revealing its lasting modern impact.

Scholar Will Tosh explores the hidden queer lives in Shakespeare’s works, revealing how early modern gender fluidity and same-sex desire influenced the Bard’s plays and characters.