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.

Whitney White is a theatrical powerhouse. A director, writer, actor, and musician, White’s work has been seen on Broadway, Off Broadway, and at major institutions including The Public Theater, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and, most recently, the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her projects include Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, The Last Five Years, Macbeth in Stride, and By The Queen, which was featured in the Folger’s 2025 Reading Room Festival.

In this episode, White discusses All Is But Fantasy, her four-play musical cycle created for the RSC, where it’s now receiving its world premiere. The high-energy, gig-theater show investigates Shakespeare’s women and ambition, focusing on Lady Macbeth, Emilia, Juliet, and Richard III. Each piece combines performance with original music, using sound and rhythm as a way into the text and as a tool for rethinking these characters whose inner lives are often cut short or overlooked.

White reflects on why Shakespeare’s women so often meet tragic ends, how those stories continue to feel familiar, and what it means to keep staging them now. She considers the ways that music, performance, and adaptation can help us better understand Shakespeare today.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 10, 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 Melvin Rickarby in Stratford, 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.

Whitney White is an Obie and Lily Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated director, actor, and musician, celebrated for her bold, innovative storytelling across both Broadway and off-Broadway. She recently received the Drama League’s 2025 Founders Award for Excellence in Directing and an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Directing.

All Is But Fantasy, White’s four-part musical exploration of Shakespeare’s women and ambition, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, marks her RSC debut as a writer, director, and actor. The two-part high-energy gig theater show is receiving its world premiere at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon in January and February 2026.

White’s other directing credits on Broadway include The Last Five Years and Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, off-Broadway credits include Liberation, Walden, Jordan’s, Soft, On Sugarland, What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Our Dear Drug Lord, and For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad. She recently opened Saturday Church, a new musical featuring songs by Sia and Honey Dijon at New York Theatre Workshop. She also created Macbeth In Stride at Brooklyn Academy of Music, writing the book, music and lyrics. Additional directing work includes The Secret Life of Bees, By The Queen, The Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, A Human Being of a Sort, An Iliad, The Amen Corner, Othello, Canyon, and Jump.

On screen, White has appeared in Ocean’s Eight, Single Drunk Female, Louie, and The Playboy Club, and she contributed as a writer to Boots Riley’s acclaimed series I’m A Virgo for Prime Video.

Many Shakespeare fans don’t think of themselves as “math people.” They’re theater kids, poetry lovers, bookworms, right? But in Shakespeare’s world, math and literature were deeply intertwined. In Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare’s Mathematical Life and Times, mathematician Rob Eastaway explores how mathematical thinking shaped Shakespeare’s language and imagination.

Shakespeare lived at a moment of major intellectual change, when England was newly encountering Indo-Arabic numerals, experimenting with new systems of calculation, and redefining ideas of measure and proportion. Eastaway shows how Shakespeare delighted in numbers and patterns, playing with “scores,” fractions, and symmetry in works like Othello, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter’s Tale. Even familiar references to “nothing,” time, and music take on new meaning when viewed through a mathematical lens.

In this episode, Eastaway reveals how math was woven into everyday life in Shakespeare’s time and how reading with our “math glasses” on can offer fresh insights into Shakespeare’s language.

While Shakespeare was reshaping English drama, a parallel theatrical revolution was unfolding in Spain. During the Spanish Golden Age, playwright Lope de Vega pioneered the comedia nueva, a bold new dramatic form that broke classical rules in favor of fast-paced plots, emotional intensity, and popular appeal.

In this episode, scholar and translator Barbara Fuchs shares how the theatrical innovations of Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Ana Caro Mallén de Soto, and others, including a three-act structure, blended genres, and complex female roles, helped redefine early modern theater and influenced the kinds of stories told on the English stage. Fuchs traces the rich cultural exchange between Spain and England and the work that she is doing now with Diversifying the Classics to bring plays in Spanish from both sides of the Atlantic to new audiences.

Fuchs also discusses her adaptation for young audiences of de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna, a powerful story of collective resistance, whichwill be featured at the Folger’s Reading Room Festival on Saturday, January 24.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 12, 2025. © 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 help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Barbara Fuchs, trained as a comparatist (English, Spanish, French, Italian), Professor Fuchs works on European cultural production from the late fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, with a special emphasis on literature and empire, and on theater and performance in transnational contexts. As part of her commitment to the public humanities and collaborative work, she directs the UCLA “Diversifying the Classics” initiative and edits the series “The Comedia in Translation and Performance” for Juan de la Cuesta. She is also director of LA Escena, Los Angeles’ biennial festival of Hispanic classical theater, founded in 2018. Currently, Professor Fuchs serves as one of the articles editors for Renaissance Quarterly.

Professor Fuchs’ recent books include Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Penn 2021); The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs (Juan de la Cuesta 2021), a collaborative translation of Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer; and The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe (Toronto 2020), co-edited with Mercedes García-Arenal. She is also one of the editors for the Norton Anthology of World Literature (2012, 2018). Her Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a time of Pandemic, one of the first studies of how theater was transformed by COVID-19, was published by Methuen in September 2021. She is currently working on a translation and critical edition of Ginés Pérez de Hita’s Las guerras civiles de Granada with Payton Phillips Quintanilla.

In 2021, Professor Fuchs served as President of the Modern Language Association. She was recently awarded the inaugural “Premio Ñ” from the Instituto Cervantes, for the promotion of Spanish language and culture.

Why does Samuel Pepys’s diary still matter 200 years after it was first published? In her new book, The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary, historian Kate Loveman examines how Pepys’s extraordinary consistency as a diarist has made his writing one of the richest records of everyday life in Restoration England.

Writing almost daily for nearly a decade, Pepys’s diary documents everything from politics and scientific discoveries to theater and fashion. Even in times of crisis, Pepys reveals life’s ordinary concerns, from worrying about the source of hair for wigs during the Great Plague to safeguarding a wheel of expensive Parmesan cheese during the Great Fire of London. He also offers a rare glimpse into contemporary theatergoing, recording audience reactions and his own opinions, including Shakespeare. He famously dismissed A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In this episode, Loveman explores how Pepys’s diary has been edited, published, censored, and rediscovered over centuries, entertaining readers from the Victorian era to the COVID-19 pandemic in the 21st century. Pepys’s daily observations show how careful, habitual record-keeping can transform ordinary life into an invaluable historical resource.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published December 30, 2025. © 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 help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Kate Loveman is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Leicester and an internationally recognized expert on Pepys and Restoration literature. She is the author of Reading Fictions, 1660–1740: Deception in English Literary and Political Culture; Samuel Pepys and his Books: Reading, Newsgathering, and Sociability, 1660–1703; and The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary; and the editor of The Diary of Samuel Pepys for Everyman.

What did people really eat in Shakespeare’s England? In her new book, Much Ado About Cooking, food historian Sam Bilton uncovers the vibrant and surprising world of early modern cuisine—where sugar was locked away like treasure, fresh salads were everyday fare, and a “banquet” meant a “post-feast after party” dessert course.

Bilton brings to life the flavors behind Shakespeare’s food references: mince pies, herb-packed green sauces, saffron-brightened tarts, and even whimsical dishes crafted to look like something else entirely. These foods reveal a world shaped by global trade, humoral medicine, and a delight in spectacle.

In this episode, Bilton discusses how cooking, dining, and food imagery can open a new window onto Shakespeare’s plays and the people who lived, ate, and celebrated in his time.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published December 16, 2025. © 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 help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Sam Bilton is a food historian, author and presenter of the award-winning “Comfortably Hungry” and “A is for Apple” podcasts. She has written books on the history of gingerbread, saffron and chocolate, and writes articles on food history for a variety of print and online publications. Sam has also hosted several Shakespeare-themed supper clubs over the years. You can find out more details about Sam on her website: sambilton.com.

Hamnet, the acclaimed novel by Maggie O’Farrell, is now a major film. The story imagines the life and death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, whose loss would later echo through one of his most famous tragedies, Hamlet. O’Farrell joins director and co-writer Chloé Zhao to reveal how they adapted the novel for the big screen.

With Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William, the film reframes the Shakespeare family story as one of deep love, rupturing grief, and artistic creation. O’Farrell and Zhao discuss developing the screenplay together, interpreting Shakespeare as a husband and father, building the film’s immersive natural world, and shaping an unforgettable Globe Theatre sequence that anchors the emotional arc of the story.

O’Farrell and Zhao talk about adaptation, artistry, and how a 400-year-old loss continues to inspire new ways of imagining Shakespeare’s life and legacy.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published December 2, 2025. © 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 help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Before Shakespeare became a literary icon, he was a working writer trying to earn a living in an emerging and often precarious new industry. In The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare, Daniel Swift explores the dream of making money from creating art, a dream shared by James Burbage, who built The Theatre, the first purpose-built commercial playhouse in London, and a young Shakespeare. Nobody had ever really done that before, with playwrights at the time notoriously poor.

Swift shows that Shakespeare’s creativity unfolded in a rapidly changing London where commercial theater was just beginning to take shape. The Theatre offered Shakespeare the stability, a close team of actors and cowriters, and the professional home that he needed to develop his craft. Swift reveals a playwright who was learning on the job and becoming the Shakespeare we know today.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published November 18, 2025. © 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 help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Daniel Swift is an associate professor of English at Northeastern University, London. He is the author of books on Ezra Pound, William Shakespeare, and the poetry of the Second World War, and editor of John Berryman’s The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, New Statesman, and Harper’s.

Imprisoned for nearly 20 years by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, fought her battles through words, sending and receiving coded letters hidden in books, garments, and even beer barrels.

Historian Jade Scott, of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, has uncovered the human and political depths behind Mary’s captivity through 57 recently decrypted letters, coded missives that reveal her as a strategist, an adept diplomat, and a woman navigating the perilous politics of Elizabethan England.

In her new book, Captive Queen: The Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scots, Scott draws on these newly decoded letters to illuminate Mary’s time in captivity, her alliances and betrayals, and the intricate game of espionage that ultimately led to her execution.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published November 4, 2025. © 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 help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Jade Scott, PhD, is a historian specializing in Mary, Queen of Scots and is an expert on her letters. She is a lecturer in historical linguistics at the University of Glasgow and an associate fellow of the Royal Historical Society, researching early modern Scottish women and their correspondence. Fascinated by Mary since she was a child, Jade was contacted by the DECRYPT Project to consult on the translations of Mary’s newly-decoded letters, which led to the writing of Captive Queen. Jade lives in Glasgow.