Shakespeare famously never attended university. But not only has his work inspired generations of scholarship, his plays, too, are filled with scholarly characters. Shakespeare, it seems, took an interest in learning.

Perhaps that’s why so many people come to Shakespeare for wisdom that they can apply to their own lives. While leading the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Shakespeare Workshop, professor and dramaturg Sean Keilen noticed that people look to Shakespeare and the humanities to answer questions like “Who am I? Why am I here? And how should I live?”

Keilen’s book, Shakespeare’s Scholars: Three Lessons from the Liberal Arts, illustrates how learned characters from Hamlet, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and The Tempest more can guide us to those answers —some through their wisdom, and others through their own flawed judgment.

In this episode, Keilen shares vital lessons from Shakespeare’s fictional scholars in humility, self-knowledge, and perhaps most importantly, forging connection with others.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 30, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Sarah Lai Stirland in Santa Cruz and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

“Elizabeth was king, now James is queen.” So went the joke circulating around London in the 17th century. While Elizabeth I became an icon for transgressing traditional gender roles, her successor is all too often overlooked or even mocked for the same reasons. Yet James I was a multifaceted ruler who led a fascinating life—and his personal relationships only add to that complexity.

For generations, historians avoided labeling the intimate relationships between James and his “favorites” as romantic. But after combing through James’s personal correspondence, historian and author Gareth Russell has uncovered compelling evidence of five significant love affairs with men. His award-winning book, The Six Loves of James I, reveals how these relationships—and his marriage to Queen Anne of Denmark—guided the course of his life and reign.

James I’s story is a turbulent one, filled with assassination attempts, kidnapping, and witch hunts. It’s also a story of a man who loved “indiscreetly and obstinately,” for better or for worse.

In this episode, Gareth Russell explores the untold history of a complicated king through the lens of the great loves of his life.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 16, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Pavel Barter in Belfast and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

“Is he a Communist?” During a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing in 1938, Congressman Joe Starnes probed into the politics of a writer produced by the Federal Theatre Project. The playwright in question? Christopher Marlowe.

While Starnes’s blunder became legendary, Shakespeare and his contemporaries continued to come up throughout the Red Scare years. Something about early modern poetry and plays often rang as disquietingly topical.

In her book, A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the Red Scare, Marjorie Garber reveals how literature has always posed a threat to authority, a power of which Shakespeare was well aware. As she puts it, “poetry makes trouble all the time.”

This episode explores how Shakespeare became a magnet for suspicion during the Red Scare—and how he spoke to the moment from beyond the grave.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 5, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Philip Bodger in Lewes, England and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Marjorie Garber is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Research Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of twenty books, including Shakespeare in Bloomsbury and A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the Red Scare. She lives in London, UK. Learn more about Marjorie Garber and her work at her website.

One small step into the wrong classroom becomes a giant leap into a new life as a Shakespearean actor. That’s how Jacob Ming-Trent tells it in his remarkable one-man tour-de-force, How Shakespeare Saved My Life. As the Folger prepares to welcome How Shakespeare Saved My Life to the stage this June, Ming-Trent joins us to delve deeper into his story.

Ming-Trent is no stranger to the Folger stage, having previously presented How Shakespeare Saved My Life at the 2024 Reading Room Festival and portrayed Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2022. A multitalented stage and screen actor, he has appeared in Broadway musicals from Gypsy to Shrek, television series like Watchmen and Ray Donovan, and films including The Forty-Year-Old Version and Friendship.

In this episode, Ming-Trent presents Shakespeare as an urban poet in the vein of Tupac and Biggie. He breaks down the inspiration behind How Shakespeare Saved My Life and how he brings his own experience to his interpretation of Shakespeare’s words, rearranging and reframing them to create something uniquely personal.

A century after Shakespeare’s death, his words were in danger of being forgotten. While plays like King Lear and Othello still played to packed houses across England, audiences saw only the bowdlerized versions—censored, rewritten, and stripped of anything that could be considered distasteful.

How, then, did Shakespeare’s original works re-emerge? Thank the Shakespeare Ladies Club, a group of influential women who rescued his reputation(and his double entendres) from obscurity.

In their book, The Shakespeare Ladies Club: The Forgotten Women Who Saved the Bawdy Bard, Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth uncover the club’s unsung contributions to Shakespeare’s legacy. Thanks to the Hainsworths, Westminster Abbey has now officially recognized the Shakespeare Ladies Club for their campaign to memorialize Shakespeare in Poets’ Corner. But, they reveal, the club’s influence goes even deeper than that.

In this episode, Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth shine a light on this remarkable group of women and how they made Shakespeare the cultural icon he is today.

Is Shakespeare still Shakespeare even if every word is changed? While Shakespeare’s work is often hailed for its universality, its meter, metaphor, and wordplay pose special challenges for translators. How do you convey the rhythm and spirit of Shakespeare’s words in a language that follows fundamentally different rules?

Author and translator Daniel Hahn explores these questions in his book, If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. He interviews translators from around the world, providing unique perspectives on Shakespeare’s language and impact.

Some of Shakespeare’s best-known lines can prove the most difficult to capture, like Henry V’s “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Even something seemingly simple like Lady Macbeth’s “Are you a man?” may be tricky to translate when the word “man” carries different connotations in different languages.

In this episode, Hahn dives into the challenges and rewards of translating Shakespeare, exploring not only what is lost in translation, but also what is gained.

What is it like to create a Shakespeare play that’s never been written—and will never be performed again? The Improvised Shakespeare Company is a long-running ensemble that performs entirely unscripted plays in the style of Shakespeare. Founded in Chicago in 2005, the company has spent two decades building a devoted following through performances in the United States and internationally.

In this episode, Blaine Swen, the company’s founder, and Ross Bryant discuss how their performances take shape in real time, beginning with a single audience-suggested title and unfolding into a full-length play that will never be repeated. Drawing on techniques from long-form improvisation and a deep familiarity with Shakespeare’s language, structure, and themes, the ensemble creates stories that balance poetry, comedy, spontaneity, and lots of fun.

They reflect on what makes Shakespeare particularly well-suited to improv, from his larger-than-life characters and emotional intensity to the flexibility of his language and cultural references. They also explore the mechanics of their process—how they listen, build on each other’s ideas, and embrace mistakes as opportunities—and why committing fully to the moment often leads to the most surprising and meaningful results.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 6, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Paola García Acuña. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services were provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Ross Bryant is a writer/performer from North Carolina. Ross is a performer on Dropout.tv and can be seen regularly at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater in Los Angeles. Ross also tours the country and performs monthly at The Largo in LA with The Improvised Shakespeare Company. Ross began performing in Chicago where was a member of the resident cast of The Second City Mainstage. Ross is a writer for Mystery Science Theater 3000, and has co-written original television pilots for Pop TV, Warner Bros and the Showtime network. TV credits include The Good Place (NBC), Crashing (HBO), and I Think You Should Leave (Netflix). Ross also the host of the horror/comedy/improv podcast Push the Roll with Ross Bryant. Instagram: @rossbb

Blaine Swen is the creator and director of The Improvised Shakespeare Company®. He is a writer/actor based in Nashville where you can catch him in the two-person improvised musical Erica & Blaine. Blaine also performs regularly in Chicago where the Chicago Reader named him the “Best Improviser in Chicago.” His iO Chicago credits include the two-person group Blessing with Susan Messing and the one-person improvised musical BASH! Additional Chicago stage credits include Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Pegasus Players Theatre, The Back Room Shakespeare Project, and The Second City. He has appeared on Dropout.tv and has developed original pilots with NBC, Universal Cable Productions, and Pop TV. You can hear him as Arnor the Warrior on the podcast Hello, from the Magic Tavern. Blaine also has a PhD in philosophy from Loyola University, Chicago. Instagram: @blaine_swen

Known to many as Lady Danbury in Netflix’s Bridgerton, Adjoa Andoh, MBE, is also a celebrated Shakespearean actor and director.

Across her career, Andoh has returned to Shakespeare not as a fixed canon, but as a space for reimagining power, identity, and belonging. Her landmark Richard II at Shakespeare’s Globe, created with the UK’s first all-women-of-color company, reexamined ideas of nationhood and empire following Brexit, asking who gets to claim the story of England and how those stories are constructed.

In this episode, Andoh reflects on Shakespeare as a profoundly human writer, exploring how vulnerability, love, and damage shape even his most complex characters. Rather than presenting the plays as distant or elite, she invites us to experience them as living conversations—stories that challenge us to shift perspective and see both the stage and the world more expansively.

During her Director’s residency at the Folger, Andoh will lead a series of public programs, bringing her distinctive approach to Shakespeare to Folger audiences.

Listen to Shakespeare Unlimited on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, or your favorite podcast platform.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published March 24, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica, with Garland Scott serving as executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Ati Pikal in London, England, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Paola García Acuña. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services were provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Many readers turn to Shakespeare for the beauty of his language or the power of his stories. But in Thinking Through Shakespeare, Oxford scholar David Womersley suggests that the plays offer something else as well: a way of exploring some of the deepest questions about human life.

Womersley looks at tragedies like Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear to show how Shakespeare places audiences inside difficult moral and philosophical problems. The plays raise questions about identity, power, and the tension between doing what is right and doing what is personally advantageous. Rather than presenting clear answers, Shakespeare lets these ideas collide on stage.

In this episode, Womersley explains how Shakespeare’s plays become what he calls “crucibles” for thinking. As characters struggle with competing values and impossible choices, audiences go on that journey with them—testing ideas, reconsidering assumptions, and confronting the same enduring dilemmas that have shaped human thought for centuries.

When you visit a new city, one of your first stops might be a museum. It turns out that public art galleries are largely an 18th-century invention. In London in 1789, publisher John Boydell helped shape that new cultural experience with an ambitious project in Pall Mall: a gallery devoted entirely to scenes from Shakespeare.

Boydell commissioned leading British artists to paint pivotal moments from the plays, then sold engraved reproductions for museum-goers to take home with them. The gallery quickly became a sensation and was visited by everyone who was anyone, from Jane Austen to the Prince of Wales. It also played a powerful role in transforming William Shakespeare from a popular playwright into a national icon.

The venture ultimately failed due to the economic turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, and the many life-size paintings were cut into smaller canvases and all sold at auction. Yet its influence endured, shaping exhibition culture, influencing a British school of art, and inspiring the visual mythology of The

Joining us to explore the rise and fall of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery are Rosie Dias, Professor of Art History at the University of Warwick, and Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 23, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had technical help from Mike Rucinski of Boutique Recording in Great Malvern, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Our web producer is Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services were provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.