In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously imagined what might have happened if Shakespeare had a sister who was as gifted a writer as he was. She invents “Judith” Shakespeare, and concludes that this female genius would have been doomed.

But that’s not the end of the story. If Woolf had read Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer (nee Bassano), Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Carey, she might have thought differently about the fate of her fictional Judith Shakespeare. Ramie Targoff's new book, Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance, explores the lives and works of those four women.. Targoff tells us about them and reflects on why reading their work is so important.

Ramie Targoff teaches English and Italian literature at Brandeis University. She’s also a member of the Folger’s Board of Governors. Her book Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance is available from Knopf.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published March 12, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Digital Island Studios in New York and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

In her new memoir, "Green World," Shakespeare scholar Michelle Ephraim tells the story of how she came to Shakespeare relatively late in her education. Although she didn’t grow up with Shakespeare, Ephraim became transfixed by "The Merchant of Venice" as a grad student. In particular, she found herself drawn to Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, and the mysteries of their relationship. That curiosity led Ephraim to discover a novel Biblical interpretation of some lines from the play as she researched her dissertation. In Ephraim’s memoir, "Merchant" refracts through the changing dynamics of her own family, as her Holocaust-survivor parents age and she becomes a mother herself. She shares her story with host Barbara Bogaev.

Michelle Ephraim teaches Shakespeare at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. She’s the co-author of a cocktail recipe book called Shakespeare, Not Stirred, and the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast, both with Caroline Bicks. Her memoir Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare won the Juniper Award for Creative Nonfiction, and is out now from University of Massachusetts Press.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published March 12, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from WICN in Worcester and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Eddie Izzard has a long record of dramatic roles. But it’s her decades of experience as a stand-up comedian that prepared Izzard for her recent solo shows—first Great Expectations, and now Hamlet at New York’s Greenwich House Theatre.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 27, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Digital Island Studios in New York and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Maybe there really was something rotten in Denmark. On this episode, we talk with Bradley J. Irish about disgust in Shakespeare. In his new book, Irish identifies the emotion, which combines physical revulsion and moral outrage, as one of the central thematic emotions in Shakespeare’s plays. In his close readings across the canon, Irish finds disgust everywhere: in Caius Martius Coriolanus’s disdain for ordinary Romans, in the over-indulgent food Antony eats in Egypt, in Henry IV’s preoccupation with sickness and disease in Henry IV, and beyond. Bradley Irish is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

Bradley J. Irish is a professor at Arizona State University. Shakespeare and Disgust: The History and Science of Early Modern Revulsion is out now from Bloomsbury Publishing.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 13, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

When the Folger reopens on June 21 and you come to take a walk in our new west garden, look down at the garden bed. There, you'll see a new poem, written for the Folger by US Poet Laureate emerita Rita Dove. This week, she joins us on the podcast to read that poem aloud for the first time. Plus, Dove reflects on how writing for marble is different from writing for the page, and remembers the moment she discovered Shakespeare. Rita Dove is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

Rita Dove served as the US Poet Laureate for two terms, from 1993 to 1995, and as a special bicentennial consultant to the Library of Congress in 1999. Her third collection of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, won the Pulitzer Prize. She is the only poet ever to receive both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of the Arts, from presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In 2021, she received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters—the first African American poet in the medal’s history. She teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Dove has also read in the Folger's O.B. Hardison Poetry series four times, and contributed a poem to our 2012 collection Shakespeare’s Sisters: Women Writers Bridge Five Centuries.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 30, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from With Good Reason, Virginia Humanities, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Even after appearing in a Shakespeare play, historical romance novels, a Broadway musical, and prestige TV dramas, there's still more to learn about Anne Boleyn.

A new biography by the team of husband-and-wife historians John Guy and Julia Fox takes a scholarly look at the evidence surrounding Anne’s rise and fall. They freshly examine well-known accounts, and also take in passing references in neglected sources. In particular, they focus on Anne’s years of training in the courts of Europe, which shaped her into the formidable woman whom Henry VIII came to regard as an intellectual equal. It also prepared her for the ruthless politics of the English court, where Anne’s ambition and cunning won her some powerful enemies. Fox and Guy are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

John Guy is a fellow at Cambridge University and a Tudor historian who has appeared on many TV and radio documentaries about the period. He’s written biographies of Henry VIII, Thomas More, and Queen Elizabeth I. His biography of Mary Queen of Scots was adapted into a film in 2018. Julia Fox has written biographies of Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and Anne’s sister, Jane Boleyn. Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the Marriage That Shook Europe is out now from Harper.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 16, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Shakespeare has the perfect lines for riding into battle or stumbling around a stormy heath. But does he have the right stuff to take us on a daily commute or a trip to the grocery store? On this episode, David and Ben Crystal join us to talk about their new book, "Everyday Shakespeare: Lines for Life," which offers daily Shakespeare quotes you can apply to everyday life.

The Crystals—David is a linguist, Ben is an actor—are the father-son duo behind the "Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary"; "Shakespeare´s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion"; and "The Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation." We talk to them about which quotations they included, why they chose to skip the typical contextual notes, and how you can improve your memory for Shakespeare’s words.

"Everyday Shakespeare: Lines for Life" is available now from Chambers Books.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 2, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

The most unforgivable crime in Richard III has to be when the king orders the murder of his two young nephews, Edward and Richard. But what if Richard III was framed?

Philippa Langley is the amateur historian whose commitment to righting a historical wrong led to the discovery of Richard III’s remains a decade ago. Langley wasn’t a scholar—she was a screenwriter and a member of the Richard III Society. But she had become certain that Richard was the victim of Tudor propaganda, and that Shakespeare’s play had a key role in the slander. Langley convinced academic historians and archaeologists at the University of Leicester to excavate the parking lot where she believed Richard was buried.

Those experts did find a body, and DNA analysis confirmed that the remains belonged to Richard III. That discovery led to further insights about the historical Richard. The physical deformities of Shakespeare’s character were Tudor inventions. Far from being a “bunch-backed toad,” the real Richard III had nothing more than a case of scoliosis.

Since discovering the body in 2012, Philippa Langley and a team of collaborators have worked on cleaning up Richard’s reputation. Her new book, The Princes in the Tower, examines Richard’s most famous alleged crime: the murder of his two nephews, the sons of Edward IV. Investigating their disappearance as a 500-year-old cold case, Langley uncovers evidence that the princes survived Richard III’s reign… and points to another suspect for their eventual deaths. Langley talks with Barbara Bogaev about tracking down two of history's most famous missing persons.

Philippa Langley's new book, The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case, is out now from Pegasus Books.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published December 19, 2023. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

What comes to mind when you think about a "court jester?"  What if we told you that fools in the Tudor court didn’t look or sound anything like the zany clowns you have in mind?

Historians don’t know much about Will Somer. We know he was Henry VIII’s court fool, but the details of his biography—and, crucially, his comedy—were never recorded.

By Shakespeare’s time, Somer had become famous. Whenever a poet or playwright needed to reference a long-lost comedy great, they’d name-check Will Somer—kind of like mentioning Charlie Chaplin or Groucho Marx today. But unlike Chaplin or Groucho, none of Somer's jokes survived. So later writers just made them up, inventing a comedian to suit their own tastes.

Peter K. Andersson’s new biography of Somer, "Fool: In Search of Henry the 8th’s Closest Man," digs through the layers of fiction that accumulated over the centuries to reveal is a fool very different from anything we might recognize from King Lear or Twelfth Night. We ask Andersson what we know about Somer, how he became a celebrity, and how people with intellectual disabilities were treated in the 16th century.

Peter K. Andersson is a historian at Sweden's Örebro University. "Fool: In Search of Henry the 8th’s Closest Man" is available from Princeton University Press.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published December 5, 2023. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Frida Anund in Sweden and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Isabelle Schuler’s debut novel Queen Hereafter attempts to fill in a backstory for Lady Macbeth. The book takes place in 11th century Scotland, where a king’s reign tended to be short and brutal. For her version of Lady M, Schuler didn’t rely on Shakespeare or his source material, Holinshed’s Chronicles. Instead, she looked to the annals and sagas that predate Holinshed. There, Schuler found Gruoch, who married Macbethad (the historical Macbeth) after her first husband died. Schuler talks with Barbara Bogaev about how she filled in the gaps of Shakespeare's tragedy.

Queen Hereafter is available now from Harper Perennial.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published November 21, 2023. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.