Inspired by Shakespeare

Scenes of winter in the Folger collection, from snowy outdoor scenes to fashionable illustrations to mentions of winter in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

The end of the year brings feasts, celebrations, and family. Our reading list of Folger Book Club picks offers a wide range of ways to reflect on the ties that bind us.

Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello interviews director, Brenna Corner, about Verdi’s opera inspired by Macbeth.

Actor Colman Domingo takes us behind the scenes of the making of his new film, Sing Sing, the inspiring true story of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at the maximum security prison.

The contemporary artist reflects on his new piece for the Folger’s Shakespeare Exhibition and how his work uses museums’ collections to explore their histories.

Isabelle Schuler tells us about her new novel, Queen Hereafter.

Hit musical & Juliet combines Romeo and Juliet with the songs of pop hitmaker Max Martin. Writer and executive producer David West Read (Schitt’s Creek) tells us about how the idea came to him while he was concussed.

Lolita Chakrabarti on writing the Shakespeare family, puppet kestrels, Ira Aldridge, and adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet for the stage.

Theater-maker and past Folger Fellow Debra Ann Byrd tells us about her solo show.

Talene Monahon’s play Jane Anger was inspired by the pandemic and a radical 16th-century proto-feminist pamphlet.

Adams talks with host Barbara Bogaev about how he turned a five-act play into a two-act opera—which scenes got the hook, new lines written in the style of the Bard, and what Shakespeare may have thought of the play’s characters.

Composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn talk about adapting Hamlet to create an opera that subverts expectations and takes audiences inside the minds of Hamlet and Ophelia.