By thebickspod
A bickering husband and wife duo discuss their faves.
One of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays, Timon of Athens (aka "How to Make Friends and Alienate People") may not be his most engaging yarn -- being co-authored by Thomas Middleton strikes your humble podcasters as one potential reason why -- but...
Much like many of our modern stories, Shakespeare used the family as the core of many of his tales, so we dove into the many vagaries of families in Shakespeare's plays to see what made them tick. What was the...
Who has three daughters, two thumbs, and one inheritance to distribute? That guy! *pointing at King Lear* That simple premise becomes the source for one of Shakespeare's most well known and tragic plays. It's also a strangely unsatisfying journey into...
This is a very special episode dedicated to the era most near and dear to (at least one of) us: the 90s. It was an era that kicked off with parachute pants and Kurt Cobain, and ended with Friends at...
Another one of Shakespeare's problem plays, All's Well That Ends Well doesn't really, well... end well. It's a play deeply concerned about gender norms, sex, and lies, with some interesting characters who - like those in other problem plays - defy...
Shakespeare's ability to write convincing human emotions is one of the reasons why he remains such a popular playwright to this day. His works explore what it truly means to be human -- warts and all. And the warts are...
Jealousy, sex, revenge, racism and outcasts - Othello is a play brimming with emotional themes and characters swayed by those same emotions. We discuss all these themes, try to place them within a bit of context, then discuss how they...
While it's certainly possible to do Shakespeare without any hint of comedy (and lord knows we've seen a few productions, especially on film, that lean that way), it's also possible to have Shakespeare plays that get the audience rolling in...
While many of Shakespeare's plays are talked about as being timeless, most of them are in fact very grounded in the specificities of Elizabethan and Jacobean England and the larger European renaissance. Measure for Measure is no different, but because of...
In 1996 Joni Mitchell released two compilation albums - Hits and the appropriately contrapuntal Misses - to show how even the most well-regarded of artists occasionally creates something that never really finds the audiences they might deserve. When it comes to Shakespeare, the...
Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare's least popular, least performed plays, and there are a multitude of reasons why that might be. None of the characters are particularly likeable. The various plots are mercenary, cruel, and violent. And it's...
Shakespeare may have penned some of the most memorable characters, from Shylock to Hamlet to King Lear, but he's also shown up as a character himself over the years. This episode we are looking at a different kind of Shakespeare,...
One of Shakespeare's better loved comedies, Twelfth Night brings the gender-bending of Merchant of Venice and Two Gentlemen of Verona together with the love-as-illness of Romeo & Juliet, then stirs everything together with a sense of carnival-esque revelry. Join us...
What do a bunch of 400 year old plays have to tell us about mental health? A surprising bit actually. This episode we're looking at four character - Jaques from As You Like It, Hamlet and Ophelia from Hamlet, and Lady Macbeth...
Hamlet is arguably the first of Shakespeare's "Big Plays" -- the magnificent tragedies, the ones that everyone studies in their English classes, that hold a special place in the canon because of their thematic and dramatic importance. Oh, sure, we've...
Preamble: As mentioned in the episode itself, we recorded this episode using Nvidia's Broadcast app for the first time to try and cut down on background noise. Our first tests went fine but this episode wound up coming across as...
Sometimes, you really can judge a book by its cover, or even, just by its title. That's the case for this Shakespearean comedy, which tips it's hat in all sorts of directions without ever proceeding down any of them. It's...
We live in a politically-charged age -- how can anyone deny that? But it's likely true that there has never been an age that hasn't been touched by politics at all, whether by the formal politics of our various governmental...
Power, politics, ambition, and honour. Four human facets set across the backdrop of a failing Republic. Is Julius Caesar the most topical play to talk about on November 3, 2020? Yes, but we swear we didn't plan it that way...
What goes on behind the scenes to run a full-scale Shakespeare festival? How are the plays selected? How long does it take? How much does it cost? This episode we found out the answers to all these questions with the...
Henry V is one of Shakespeare's grandest and most legendary plays, partly because it depicts the stunning historical victories of one of England's greatest kings, but also because Shakespeare skillfully weaves so many universal themes into the events of this...
Why is it so easy to buy trinkets and knick-knacks with the face of an English poet who's been dead for 400 years? More importantly, why are we so willing to buy them? Those questions are the crux of what...
Merry wives, jealous husbands, faeries and a wedding! This play - rumored to be written at the behest of Queen Elizabeth herself - is a comedy unlike any of the others in Shakespeare's repertoire. An almost proto-restoration play about class,...
If you're like us, you probably think that the intersection of Shakespeare and the big and small screen might not be a very important one. But you, like us, would be wrong: the two are more intimately entwined than you...
One of Shakespeare's most beloved and often-produced plays, Much Ado About Nothing is a very Elizabethan story about men and women, and the lies they're told about each other. Featuring the beloved template for your hosts, Benedick and Beatrice are...
One of the best parts of approaching the Shakespearean plays as we have - that is, in a roughly chronological manner - is that we’ve seen the growth of Shakespeare as a writer. Nowhere is that more apparent than in...
So you've read Part 1 of Henry IV and it left you wanting more huh? You wanted more Falstaff? You got it! You wanted more Hal? You got a bit of that too! More of the same engaging, utterly entertaining...
“Shakespeare must be heard, not read.” It’s a common-enough refrain, spoken by scholars and fans alike, and for good reason. We were lucky enough to be joined by a panel of Shakespearean actors who proved that the act of performing Shakespeare...
Prince Hal, Hotspur, and Falstaff make up three of Shakespeare's most memorable characters, and they're all found in the same play! Join us for an exploration of the themes, dynamics, and characters of this first part of the second Henriad...
"Let's kill all the lawyers" is one of the most famous lines from Shakespeare, but what did the bard really think about the legal system? And more importantly, how is it presented in his plays? This episode is all about examining...
In our humble opinion (we both agree so we're calling it a singular thing here), this is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, maybe even his single greatest. Love, debt, justice, prejudice, the law, and the competing desires for mercy and...
It goes without saying that William Shakespeare, that Sweet Swan of Avon, the upstart crow who turned the English language upside down, was an influential dude. But what many people gloss over in their Bardolatrous zeal is the central question...
If there's a contest for the least known of Shakespeare's plays, we feel King John would certainly be in the running. With a meandering plot and characters that don't exactly sizzle on the page or stage, it's a tough play...
Looking at sex in Shakespeare’s time and works reveals a similar world stuck between two truths: the first that sex was always a many-splendoured, or at least multifaceted, thing; and the second that despite the crushing weight of legal, cultural,...
Romeo and Juliet. Sex and love. Family and religion. It's a story made up of pairings, from the two houses at war to the two lovers who bring the feud to an end. Your two hosts dive into this immortal...
This episode is all about the spooky, the spectral, and the supernatural. Join us for a discussion on ghosts, visions, and outright magic. We talk about the various works of Shakespeare and how the supernatural manifests itself in each, playing...
Shakespeare's original comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream follows young lovers and old lovers into the mystical, natural space of the forest, where the rules don't apply the way they do anywhere else. Continuing the increasing sophistication of his plays of late, Shakespeare...
Topic Introduction: What's in a face? That's the question we tackle this episode, with an auditory look at the various faces that have been purported to be of Shakespeare over the ages. Which portraits have been put forth as depictions of...
This week we explore one of the lesser-known history plays, Richard II. The chronological jumping-off point for the story that will eventually result in the Wars of the Roses (covered in previous episodes), this play is a through examination of...
Shakespeare's sonnets are often the first and perhaps the easiest entry point for beginning students. They are lovely little bite-sized poems that exist in discrete units which can be appreciated as works of deep emotion and literary beauty or in...
It is the humble opinion of your hosts that Shakespeare starts coming into his own as a truly innovative playwright in Love's Labour's Lost. Up until this point, the plays have been fairly straightforward in presentation, structure, and subject matter; in LLL,...
Of all Shakespeare's works, we were surprised to find that the most prescient and insightful thus far was not one of Shakepseare's plays, but one of his long form narrative poems. In the MeToo era, you'll find more willingness to...
Mistaken identity! Random beatings! Two sets of identical twins! After the far more dramatic moments of the first Henriad comes a bit of a more lighthearted play, namely the all-too-aptly-titled Comedy of Errors. This episode we discuss the relatively scant deeper...
If you've trudged through the first History Tetralogy alongside us, you'll be wondering if there's any real opportunity to redeem the Henry VI plays and their obtuse combination of too many characters, complete lack of linear time, and wandering focus....
This episode brings us to the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses, and to the emergence of Shakespeare's first great villain, the short-reigning English king, Richard III. Long a fan and public favourite of the Bard's, this play is...
Richard III is supposed to have been a conniving and megalomaniacal ruler. Henry Tudor believed he was a usurper, having wrested control of the crown and throne of England from his brother, Edward IV’s, line of succession, which he later...
Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's bloodiest plays, set around the Roman revenge tragedy of its titular character and the fateful fall of his family. Along with most of the other characters as well. S. Clarke Hulse, in his essay "Wresting the Alphabet:...
Where does that reputation for being boring come from? And what exactly do we mean by "boring"? Is this actually a stand-in for other words, like "confusing", or "obscure"? And is that reputation for boring well earned? These are the questions...
We complete our end of the Henry VI trilogy with a play that had bits of everything we liked from Part 2, but with a lot more of what we didn't like from Part 1. Join us as we wrap...
This episode we decided to get a little personal. Rather than try to take an objective look at the characters in Shakespeare's canon, we just picked out our favourites. The ones that stand out for us after years of study,...