Would you classify yourself as a straight up astrology nerd

In the spirit of having fun, in this episode I talk to repeat guest Gabbi Miller about which astrological signs different Shakespeare characters would be. I come supplying the knowledge about Shakespeare, she comes with the details about popular astrology.

I came up with this idea mostly because I thought it would make for an interesting conversation, but I was curious to know how much a role astrology would have played in the lives of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Turns out, astrology was thriving in early modern England and you can find Shakespeare grappling with that fact in the text of his own plays.

Of course he did.

Join us on a silly little romp through some of Shakespeare’s

Further Reading

"Causes in Nature: Popular Astrology in King Lear" by Phebe Jenson. Published in Shakespeare Quarterly (Winter 2018)

Further Listening

Episode 13: Saltburn (2023) and Dead Poet's Society (1989) (to hear more Gabbi)

Episode 17: What Your Favorite Shakespeare Play Says About You (for more silliness)

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

In 1769, a famous actor decided to host a giant event in honor of the man who helped make him famous: Shakespeare.

It did not go as planned.

While the Shakespeare Jubilee ended up being kind of a disaster, its aim to uphold the genius of Shakespeare ended up panning out pretty well. After all, a few hundred years later, we are all singing the praises of this immortal poet.

In this episode, we talk about people’s attitudes toward Shakespeare and his plays, why they were performed so consistently across time, and how several French writers once derided Shakespeare’s works as the writing of an amateur.

How much can one event influence the national perception of a writer? While it’s not entirely unclear, the events of the one and only Shakespeare Jubilee did have some effect on the growing scholarship and seriousness with which people viewed Shakespeare’s works.

Further Reading

What Blest Genius? The Jubilee that Made Shakespeare by Andrew McConnell Stott

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Say what you want about Achilles, but everyone definitely does know his name.

This episode we're talking all things Achilles. What the ancient Greeks thought about him, how he shows up in The Iliad, extreme fanboy Alexander the Great, his character in Troilus and Cressida, and some more modern takes on him as well.

We'll be talking a lot about the nature of his relationship with Patroclus and if it's possible to settle the age-old question of whether they were boyfriends. Plus, can we write him off for his brutal violence? How nuanced of a dude is he, anyway?

Further Listening

Greek Mythology Retellings and Troilus and Cressida (to listen my first episode on mythology and Shakespeare)

The Role of the Gods in Mythology (my episode on what the gods do for mythology and why they aren't in Troilus and Cressida)

Further Reading"Shakespeare's 'Manly' Parts: Masculinity and Effeminacy in Troilus and Cressida"by Gary Spear (Shakespeare Quarterly, Winter 1993)

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Bonus content for my fellow Greek mythology nerds out there! This episode we are talking the role of the gods in the Trojan War, how they appear in The Iliad, and how they show up in other retellings of the war, including Shakespeare, of course.

Really, this was all an elaborate excuse for me to talk about the 2004 movie Troy.

Join me as we consider why the gods are involved in mythology and the Trojan War aside from the fact that they are super fun to read about. What does their appearance and meddling mean for the people and what does it mean for our understanding of the action? Does a telling of the Trojan War work if you cut the gods out entirely?

Just a few of the fun topics we'll be exploring in this episode.

Further reading and watching

The Iliad by Homer (I read the Robert Fagles translation because that's what was available at the library but I really want to get my hands on the Emily Wilson translation)

Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes (or, if you want something Trojan War related, check out A Thousand Ships)

Troy (2004)

Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare

Credit where credit is due

Art by Halie Branson

Music recording by josdvg

Why do people dislike Twelfth Night? Because it's the internet, sometimes the reasoning is silly, but as when it comes to any piece of art, there's always a valid reason to dislike something. Could it be because you dislike the genre of the play? Maybe!

I'm on vacation this week, so bringing you a previously recorded episode before finding our way back to the mythology discussion. Please enjoy my brother and I bouncing off each other as we consider one star reviews of Twelfth Night. I try not to get defensive as people come for this play with varying degrees of success.

Listening to this conversation a second time, I was at times disappointed in myself for not getting more scholarly in response, but that's the risk with having to respond to things in real time. Plus, if you want a more scholarly take on Twelfth Night, you can go listen to my episode on it!

Further listening

Twelfth Night and Gender Exploration (my podcast episode on the play)

One-Star Shakespeare, Hamlet Edition (if you haven't listened to this one yet)

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Lovers of Greek mythology (and Shakespeare), rise up! If you thought you might like Shakespeare better if he just talked about a mythological figure for once, you’re in luck.

In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare covers some of the last days of the Trojan War, including some of the mythical heroes you all know and love, turns most of them into complete jerks, and then features a pair of young lovers who are torn about by circumstance and don’t end up dead.

This don’t end up dead thing has annoyed a lot of people for a number of years.

In this episode, I get into some of the weirdness that is this play, interpretations of the characters, and how Shakespeare is basically fitting into the mold of the modern boom of books centered around women in Greek mythology and how they all saw these stories playing out.

There’s a lot of good stuff going on, and I suggest you give it a try even though you’ve probably never heard of Troilus and Cressida and maybe don’t care. Don’t you care about the Trojan War? Who doesn’t!? (Don’t answer that.)

This play has the interesting potential to really blow up the scene as maybe the most modern feeling of all of Shakespeare’s plays that is directly engaging with a popular Greek myth. But it’s also really weird and sort of uncomfortable to get through, so it could remain obscure for everyone by the nerds.

Further Reading

Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare (This Arden edition has a really great introduction that gives a ton of context and background.)

The “Troilus and Cressida” chapter from Shakespeare After

“‘Rule in Unity’ and Otherwise: Love and Sex in ‘Troilus and Cressida’"by James O'Rourke (This has a ton of interesting stuff in it about Cressida)

“He Do Cressida in Different Voices” by Barbara Hodgdon

“Ulysses Is Not the Hero of ‘Troilus and Cressida’” by Tim Spiekerman (This author makes a detailed argument over why Ulysses is not such a great guy, going against the traditional reading of the play.)

“The Tragedy of Existence: Shakespeare's ‘Troilus and Cressida’"by Joyce Carol Oates (I don’t agree with all her points, but she makes an interesting case.)

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠⁠Halie Branson⁠⁠

Music recording by ⁠⁠josdvg⁠

Ever have to do close reading for a literature class and did you find it kind of fun or incredibly painful? Maybe you just spun some masterful BS to hit the word count.

Today we’re going to be approaching Shakespeare much in the same way, thinking about why we do close reading and then giving it a try. It’s probably not surprising that as an English major, I usually ended up finding close reading to be a useful or interesting exercise and it’s not a muscle I often have to flex now that I’ve been out of a school for…awhile.

With the use of some randomizer tools to help me land on a play and an act, I landed on a passage spoken by Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, which is perfect for being a play I enjoy and also because she is a delightful character who you might want to hear more about! I try to dig all I can out of about 20 lines of dialogue to determine what it can tell us about Beatrice, the structure of the play, and some cool new things to say to people who ask you when you’re getting married.

If you’d like to follow along, you can find full text of the play the Folger Shakespeare Library website or come find me on Instagram @somethingshakespearepod.

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play? Do you consider

In this episode, we’ll be having a little fun, looking at a selection of Shakespeare plays and determining what kind of person you are if, say, Hamlet is your favorite. (Spoiler alert: you might be a depressed Millennial.)

My own guesses will be accompanied by responses from my family and friends on social as to why they picked certain plays as their favorite.

I’m hoping that this episode can also serve as a sort of exploration of some of the different kinds of stories Shakespeare tells and the characters that populate them so you that you can determine if maybe it’s time to revisit a play you didn’t get the last time you read or watched it or if maybe it’s time to give a play a chance at all.

There’s a little something for everyone here, but we’ll have

Further Reading

The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (I first read this book at the suggestion of a librarian, who completely nailed my interests. It's set right before Elizabeth becomes queen, so in the same general time period as Shakespeare!)

The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin (The first book in the Broken Earth trilogy. These books are so good and have nothing to do with Shakespeare.)

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠⁠Halie Branson⁠⁠

Music recording by ⁠⁠josdvg⁠

To give or not to give a one-star review? That can sometimes be the question when you are faced with reading and rating a classic that doesn’t live up to the glorious tales everyone has been telling about it.

And that’s especially true when it comes to one of Shakespeare’s most famous and highly renowned plays, Hamlet. Whether you love or hate Hamlet (or even just feel sort of meh about it), we can’t deny that it has a particularly large impact on popular culture, containing multiple turns of phrase that we still use regularly today.

I asked Ben to return and look up some bad reviews of Hamlet so that we could start talking about the aspects of the play people don’t like – and how it’s largely okay to not like a classic piece of literature.

Of course, he found some kind of ridiculous arguments, but overall the reviews serve as a nice reminder that Shakespeare can be difficult to understand, that certain characters in this place generate a lot of opinions, and even that the practice of publishing and copyright used to be different!

Also, a surprise appearance from T.S. Eliot.

Further Listening

One-Star Shakespeare (the original episode)

Shakespeare in Love with Guest Ben Roman (if you like listening to Ben)

Further Reading

“Hamlet” an essay by T.S. Eliot

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Do the sonnets really prove that Shakespeare was gay? Listen, when has anything ever proven anything about Shakespeare?

More than any other piece of writing he left behind, Shakespeare's sonnets invite a lot of speculation and excitement about his biography. Throughout time people have thought that they would be able to figure out who this young man is and the identity of the woman that he must have had an affair with.

But there's just as much peril trying to read autobiography into the sonnets as there is in trying to read autobiography into his plays. The sonnets are an art form and a literary experiment all on their own. It is exciting that we don't know when they were written, whether they were published behind Shakespeare's back, or even who they are dedicated to, but for all the excitement these things generate about the details of Shakespeare's life, we have to remember that the sonnets are also a highly stylized aesthetic tool.

Join me as I explore the details that scholars have pored and argued over and how these things have helped create some interest and excitement over a body of work that often gets passed over in favor of a bunch of (admittedly very good) plays.

Sonnet collection referenced

The Sonnets and Narrative Poems of William Shakespeare, ed. William Burto and Sylvan Barnet

The Sonnets and Other Poems by William Shakespeare, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Shakespeare's Sonnets: Revised (The Arden Shakespeare) ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones

The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets by Helen Vendler

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠