The Ides of March have come and gone but I’m not quite done talking about Julius Caesar (the guy) or Julius Caesar (the play).

This play is harder to get into than some of Shakespeare’s other delightful works. To help explain why and to try to figure out where Shakespeare was coming from, I’ve read some Plutarch, gotten more context for how a sixteenth century audience might have thought about Roman history and looked at a lot of memes online.

When everyone’s favorite comparison about a distinguished figure in history is to talk about how he’s the same thing as a salad, what does that mean for how we relate to a play written about him?

Plus, some bonus thoughts on ways to set up a modern adaptation of the play.

Further Reading

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (see The Life of Brutus and The Life of Julius Caesar)

Gary Miles, “How Roman are Shakespeare’s ‘Romans’?”

Heather James, “Shakespeare’s Classical Plays” from the New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare

Marjorie Garber, “Julius Caesar” from Shakespeare After All

Credit where credit is due

Art by Halie Branson

Music recording by josdvg

Do you get super excited to tell everyone to "Beware the Ides of March" every year or are you normal?

Julius Caesar is a tricky play because I think it largely comes across as boring with a cool stabbing scene tucked into the middle of it. But, the events surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar were extremely dramatic and held a lot of emotional weight and significance, in addition to having long lasting political ramifications.

If you've only ever seen this play as boring and talky or if you've never learned anything about Roman history, then this is the episode for you! I get into some context of the history of Rome and of Julius Caesar himself so you get the full scope of the political scene at the time and why, ultimately, a group of Caesar's friends decided that he needed to die.

Happy Ides of March, everyone!

Further Reading and Listening

The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan (really, anything by Mike Duncan is a good bet)

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Have you ever watched a movie and thought it was really giving Shakespeare vibes even though it wasn’t based on one of his plays? In this episode we are playing fast and loose with the meaning of adaptation by looking at two movies that are in conversation with Shakespeare but aren’t adaptations in the traditional sense.

Join me and Gabbi Miller as we talk the scandalous and shocking Saltburn and the English class staple that is Dead Poets Society. Both movies grapple with A Midsummer Night’s Dream in one way or another and hold up Shakespeare in some way although one does so a little more obliquely than the other.

We discuss how both movies reference and represent Shakespeare, how we can see elements of his work creep into the movies even when not explicitly referenced, and how both also manage to be in dialogue with queer interpretations, although some of that was maybe by accident.

If you haven’t seen Saltburn yet, please be aware there are massive spoilers afoot. There are for Dead Poets Society too but that one’s been around for awhile and probably already traumatized you in high school.

Further viewing

Saltburn (2023)

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Were the World Mine (2008) (This is not discussed but is an additional recommendation from me if you want more modern takes on A Midsummer Night’s Dream!)

Further reading

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (obviously)

Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes offers up some excellent looks into overlooked or misinterpreted women from Greek myth and offers up a scathing look at Theseus and what a jerk he was.

Credit where credit is due

Podcast art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Do Romeo and Juliet belong in the highest levels of Shakespeare canon or are they more mid? I explore this question and more in this episode, as I work my way through some of Shakespeare's most beloved plays and most notorious couples to decide where they should be ranked on a tier system of my own devising.

The main method I used to determine where couples should fall was mostly vibes and how I felt at the time of recording, although at this moment I stand by my decisions.

Plays covered in this episode: Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

If you want to see the completed ranking, you can find it on my website.

Or, if you want to watch the YouTube video, go to my newly minted YouTube channel.

Credit where credit is due

Art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Who wants to relive English class from when you were a teenager? What if I'm the one doing it?

I've been thinking lately about the Shakespeare we read in school and how sometimes that introduction can make or break your relationship with him. And it made me wonder...was my experience reading Shakespeare in high school similar to everyone else? Did we all have to read Romeo and Juliet (spoiler: yeah, pretty much) and Much Ado About Nothing (spoiler: not really)?

I went and asked my family and friends what Shakespeare they read in high school and took a tally of the results. Some of what I found was more or less what I expected. Some of it...was a little more surprising than that.

In this episode, I cover what I learned about the frequency of certain plays that are taught in high school and mix that was my own experience reading plays in high school, reflecting on what I thought about them then and what my relationship with those plays looks like today.

For anyone who has difficulty following a list when they hear it out loud or wants to see the results rather than live in suspense, visit my website or Instagram to see the complete list.

No Further Reading this episode unless you want to read all the plays discussed here!

Credit where credit is due

Art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

In the immortal words of Viola, “I am the man.”

That’s right, we are talking about Twelfth Night and everyone’s enduring obsession with how it plays with gender, what it tells us about gender, and how all the gender expansiveness is not something solely conceived of by a modern audience.

You like Viola? We talk Viola. You like hearing about strange biological misconceptions of people living in the 1500s? We got that too. You want to hear my fan theory for a sequel of the play would take us? We’ve got it all.

This cast is stacked with great characters and we’re going to celebrate that too (unless your favorite is Orsino, then I’m extremely sorry for what you’re about to hear).

Let’s get to the carousing!

Further reading:

The Arden Shakespeare Twelfth Night (seriously the introduction is so long but it’s packed with great stuff and then you get the play as a bonus)

“The Homoerotics of Shakespearean Comedy” by Valerie Traub (from the book Shakespeare, Feminism, and Gender)

“You’ll be the man!” Homophobia and the Present in Performances of Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet by Adrian Kiernander (from the book Presentism, Gender, and Sexuality in Shakespeare) 

“Shakespeare in Transition: Pedagogies of Transgender Justice and Performance” by Sawyer Kemp (chapter in the book Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now) 

“Shakespeare, Sexuality and Gender by Stephen Orgel” (from The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare)

Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber (the chapter on Twelfth Night, of course)

Credit where credit is due

Art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

What kind of guy do you think Shakespeare was? This episode, we’re delving into the world of imagination as we consider the proud tradition of storytelling and speculation when it comes to Shakespeare biography.

Stephen Greenblatt’s National Book Award Winning biography of Shakespeare weaves a rich tapestry that gets inside the mind of one of England’s greatest playwrights. At times these efforts are illuminating and demonstrate a breadth of knowledge of the culture of the time.

At other times, it feels like maybe the author just doesn’t like Shakespeare’s wife very much.

When all you have are limited details of a person, how do you try to round out their portrait to feel more real? Authors have been attempting to tackle this for years and Greenblatt is part of that tradition.

For a little more information on Shakespeare biography, try a couple of my earlier episodes:

Bonus Episode 1: A Brief Shakespeare Biography

Episode 4: Historical Context and Shakespeare Biography

Further Reading and Listening

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

Shakespeare, Anyone? podcast episode, “Mini: Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s Wife”

The New York Times book review, ‘Will in the World’: Reinventing Shakespeare

The Guardian book review, Stephen, Will and Gary too

Review in Shakespeare Quarterly (Autumn 2005)

Review of Shakespeare’s Freedom in Comparative Drama Review (Fall 2011)

Review in Harvard Review (2005)

Review in College Literature (Fall 2006)

Read Antony and Cleopatra and judge the relationship of the main characters yourself!

Credit where credit is due

Art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

IN FAIR VERONA we set our scene and Baz Luhrmann presents us a fever dream of a film.

Amanda Bain Wysocki joins me to discuss the classic 1996 film William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, the punk rock Shakespeare adaptation many Millennials discovered as their gateway drug to the Bard.

Between Amanda’s special edition DVD and insight into the director’s commentary and me scraping various articles from the internet, together we’re able to provide an analysis of the film that looks like at why it is so loud and chaotic, why that choice does work with the intent of the play, how the movie successfully takes teenagers seriously, and extra love thrown at Mercutio in particular. (Plus we consider some problematic elements at play here.)

Don’t like this play or movie? Then we defy you, stars! But, really, we have a rich text here well worth pulling apart.

Further Reading and Viewing

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) (If you still have a DVD player, looks like you can still find the special edition DVD! Otherwise, look to streaming.)

Romeo and Juliet (the original play)

Interview with Baz Luhrmann for Signet in 1996 (archived for posterity)

“Behind the Red Curtain of Verona Beach: Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” by Toby Malone in Shakespeare Survey, 2012.

Strictly Shakespeare? Dead Letters, Ghostly Fathers, and the Cultural Pathology of Authorship in Baz Luhrmann's "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" by Courtney Lehmann in Shakespeare Quarterly, 2001

“Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet: On set with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes” by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh for Entertainment Weekly, 1996.

Credit where credit is due

Art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

Spoiler alert: Everyone dies. Except when they don't. But the title character does. Except when they don't.

The is the second part of my two part series on how genre applies to Shakespearean drama. (If you haven't listened to the previous episode on comedy and tragicomedy, you might want to check that out first.)

When it comes to tragedies, is it fair to say that those are the plays where everyone dies and leaves it at that? Did Aristotle really have all the answers when it comes to what playwrights were doing centuries later? Is it fair to say that nobody understands what Troilus and Cressida is doing?

We're going to get into it!

Stick around for a critical look at the history plays including why they used to have cooler titles, why Richard III is a cool character, and why we should maybe give these plays a tad more credit.

Further Reading

The First Folio (see more about the First Folio and the infamous catalogue page)

Aristotle's Poetics

Joyce Carol Oates, "The Tragedy of Existence: Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida'"

The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, particularly the chapters:

“Shakespeare’s tragedies” by Michael Neill

“Shakespeare’s English history plays” by Ton Hoenselaars

The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare by Russ McDonald, particularly the chapter:

“Theater à la Mode: Shakespeare and the Kinds of Drama” and accompanying primary documents

Some Shakespearean tragedies:

Hamlet

Romeo and Juliet

Troilus and Cressida

And some Shakespearean histories:

Richard III

Henry IV, part 1 and Henry IV, part 2

Richard II

Credit where credit is due

Art by ⁠Halie Branson⁠

Music recording by ⁠josdvg⁠

This episode started as an article, but it turns out you would all prefer to listen to stuff, so now it’s a podcast episode!

You want to listen to stuff, not read stuff, and I respect that. So, I dug out a little article I wrote after doing some research and recording on The Tempest and have created an audio version of it for your listening pleasure.

In this episode, I look at Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals,” one of the essays in his classic larger collection of essays. I had seen references that this particular work influenced The Tempest, and I was curious to see if the influence in the play was readily apparent.

While we can’t give Montaigne full marks for his understanding of native Brazilian culture, we can at least give him props for serving it back to the Europeans who read his work.

Further Reading

The version of Essays I have sitting on my bookshelf is the Penguin Books edition translated by JM Cohen

Find it free on Project Gutenberg.

And, of course, you could always try reading The Tempest itself.

Credit where credit is due

Art by Halie Branson

Music recording by josdvg