Off the shelf

Called “the finest actor of his generation,” Beale has played just about everyone in Shakespeare’s canon. He reflects on the roles that have shaped his career and how his approach has evolved over time.

In an excerpt from Straight Acting, Will Tosh tells the story of Richard Barnfield’s meteoric rise in literary London in the 1590s and how his groundbreaking poetry influenced Shakespeare’s sonnets.

In Shakespeare’s time, women onstage were played by boys, and for those boy players, fame could be fleeting. Nicole Galland’s novel Boy follows Alexander “Sander” Cooke, a real-life actor in Shakespeare’s company.

Summer’s a great time for reading, whether it’s at the beach or in your backyard. Explore our list of fiction and non-fiction titles about Shakespeare and his world featured on Folger blogs, podcast interviews, and our book club.

Austin Tichenor travels back to Elizabethan England with Nicole Galland’s novel Boy about Shakespeare’s acting company member Alexander Cooke in a surprisingly contemporary exploration of gender roles onstage and off.

Author Anthony Del Col shares how the newest Kill Shakespeare adventure found its inspiration in Westerns like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

How can A Midsummer Night’s Dream speak to students today? Scholar Gail Kern Paster writes that the 400-year-old play connects to a wide range of contemporary issues that 21st-century audiences care about.

Who were the ladies-in-waiting to each of Henry VIII’s six wives and what were their lives like? An excerpt from Nicola Clark’s The Waiting Game looks at these overlooked but influential figures.

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.

2024 has been a great year for new books about—and inspired by—Shakespeare. Explore our list for gift giving or adding to your own TBR list.

In an excerpt from The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV, historian Helen Castor travels back in time to the weeks just before Shakespeare’s play begins.

Austin Tichenor takes a look at Al Pacino’s new memoir, Sonny Boy. Pacino describes how central Shakespeare was to his development as a young actor.