Inside Shakespeare's plays

Acclaimed actors and real-life spouses Brian Cox and Nicole Ansari-Cox share stories from their extraordinary careers on stage and screen, from King Lear and Succession to their current roles as Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach.

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.

How do you write a “complete” life of Shakespeare when very little complete information about his life exists? Paul Menzer manages to do just that—while throwing some “wobbles into the orbit” of well-trenched folk wisdom.

From a re-imagining of The Tempest set in a Houston school gym to Macbeth’s Weird Sisters practicing brujería, The Bard in the Borderlands compiles fantastic transformations of Shakespeare by Chicanx and Indigenous playwrights.

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.

Why is it important for lawyers to brush up their Shakespeare? University of Michigan Law professor and author Len Niehoff discusses what Shakespeare can teach lawyers about looking at problems from every possible angle.

As he wraps up his final season as Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival, Antoni Cimolino discusses revisiting The Tempest, the power of forgiveness, and the “rough magic” that makes theater possible.

When scholar and Everyday Shakespeare host Caroline Bicks gained unprecedented access to Stephen King’s personal archives, she discovered that the Bard of Avon and the King of Horror have more in common than you might think.

She appears in four of Shakespeare’s plays and speaks the most lines of any of his female characters. Authors Charles O’Malley and Scott W. Stern shine the spotlight on Margaret of Anjou, Shakespeare’s most deliciously complex anti-heroine.

Shakespeare never attended university, but his plays have inspired generations of scholars. They’re also filled with learned characters. Sean Keilen shares what Shakespeare’s fictional intellectuals can teach us about the purpose of scholarship.