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King Lear

Patrick Page on King Lear and Shakespeare's Villains
Shakespeare Unlimited

Patrick Page on King Lear and Shakespeare's Villains

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Patrick Page tells us how he gets inside the mind of Lear in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 2023 production.

ENCORES: 'King Lear' performed by Folger Theatre and The Classical Theatre of Harlem
Folger Spotlight

ENCORES: 'King Lear' performed by Folger Theatre and The Classical Theatre of Harlem

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Folger Theatre
Folger Public Programs is pleased to present ENCORES, recalling the rich history of programming on the historic Folger stage. This week, we revisit a performance of 'King Lear' by Folger Theatre and The Classical Theatre of Harlem (2007).
Making BEDLAM: Creating a Shakespeare mash-up series
Production crew of BEDLAM: The Series
Shakespeare & Beyond

Making BEDLAM: Creating a Shakespeare mash-up series

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Eric Tucker Musa Gurnis

Production crew of BEDLAM: The Series. Photo by Ashley Garrett. Eric Tucker is an off-Broadway director and Artistic Director of Bedlam Theatre. Musa Gurnis is an early modern theater scholar and actor. When we pitched our Shakespeare mash-up series BEDLAM…

J.R. Thorp on Learwife
Shakespeare Unlimited

J.R. Thorp on Learwife

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Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 181 A banished queen receives word that her husband and three daughters are dead. Learwife, a new novel by J.R. Thorp, picks up where Shakespeare’s King Lear leaves off: The queen is Berte, Lear’s wife and Regan,…

Excerpt: Learwife by J. R. Thorp
Shakespeare & Beyond

Excerpt: Learwife by J. R. Thorp

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Shakespeare & Beyond

Picking up where Shakespeare’s King Lear ends, a new novel imagines the life of Lear’s wife, who in this telling has been banished for 15 years when she receives word of her family members’ deaths. Learwife by J.R. Thorp gives…

Of Roys and kings: “The shadow of Succession”
Shakespeare & Beyond

Of Roys and kings: “The shadow of Succession”

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Austin Tichenor
Austin Tichenor explores the copious Shakespearean echoes in HBO's Succession series, in which the Shakespearean actor Brian Cox plays a key role.
Speaking what we feel: Shakespeare’s plague plays
Shakespeare & Beyond

Speaking what we feel: Shakespeare’s plague plays

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Author
Austin Tichenor
How do Shakespeare's plays reflect a life filled with plague outbreaks, asks Austin Tichenor -- and do we see his plays in new ways now?
And so they play their parts: Double-casting Shakespeare’s plays
Shakespeare & Beyond

And so they play their parts: Double-casting Shakespeare’s plays

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Author
Austin Tichenor
Double-casting is a theater technique (as opposed to a literary one) that creates a meta-narrative, transforming a large-cast play into a present-tense adventure. Actors swapping costumes and changing roles (and sometimes genders) becomes part of the thrilling ride, and theater’s fundamental artifice becomes its strength. Theater’s very artificiality becomes a feature, not a bug. Shakespeare utilized this trick to both amplify subtext and heighten the drama.
William Charles Macready and the restoration of William Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’
Shakespeare & Beyond

William Charles Macready and the restoration of William Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’

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Author
Alexandra E. LaGrand
Imagine a King Lear that cut the character of the Fool, created a romance between Edgar and Cordelia, and featured a happy ending in which Lear and Cordelia both live. That was the most popular version of Shakespeare’s play for more than 150 years, until William Charles Macready’s landmark production in 1838.
“Ambiguous and dangerous meat:” Herpetophagy in the early modern world
Newts
Shakespeare & Beyond

“Ambiguous and dangerous meat:” Herpetophagy in the early modern world

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Author
Michael Walkden
Why was herpetophagy (eating reptiles and amphibians) linked with madness in Shakespeare's "King Lear"? Unpack the cultural anxieties involved in early modern English encounters with unfamiliar dietary norms.
Shakespeare and Folktales
Shakespeare Unlimited

Shakespeare and Folktales

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Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 138 You probably know where Shakespeare got the ideas for his plays. His Histories come from Holinshed’s Chronicles. Caesar and other Roman plays depend on Plutarch’s Lives. The Comedy of Errors is based on Plautus’s Menaechmi. But what…

The madness of Hamlet and King Lear: When psychiatrists used Shakespeare to argue legal definitions of insanity in the courtroom
King Lear, III, 2. Johann Heinrich Ramberg. 19th century. Folger Shakespeare Library.
Shakespeare & Beyond

The madness of Hamlet and King Lear: When psychiatrists used Shakespeare to argue legal definitions of insanity in the courtroom

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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond

King Lear, III, 2. Johann Heinrich Ramberg. 19th century. Folger Shakespeare Library. Well-known Shakespeare characters such as King Lear and Hamlet suffer (or appear to suffer) from madness — and early American psychiatrists took note. Observations drawn from literature began…

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