Fred Wilson on His New Othello-Inspired Work for the Folger
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Release Date: 06/04/2024
The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
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...
info_outline
Celebrating Elizabethan Cooking, with Sam Bilton
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
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,...
info_outline
Hamnet, with Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
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...
info_outline
London's First Playhouse and Shakespeare
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
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...
info_outline
Mary, Queen of Scots, with Jade Scott
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
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...
info_outline
Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Long before Shakespeare became a household name, there was Richard Burbage. As the first actor to play Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear, Burbage helped define what it meant to be a Shakespearean actor. A commanding performer, he became one of early modern England’s first celebrities—celebrated for his emotional power and versatility, as well as his entrepreneurial savvy as an early theater owner. In her new book "Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage: A ‘Delightful Proteus,’" scholar Siobhan Keenan explores the actor’s remarkable career and his pivotal partnership...
info_outline
Harriet Walter: New Words for Shakespeare's Women
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Shakespeare’s plays are filled with unforgettable women—but too often, their voices are cut short. Ophelia never gets to defend herself. Gertrude never explains her choices. Lady Anne surrenders to Richard III in silence. In her new book, She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said, acclaimed actor Dame Harriet Walter imagines what those characters might tell us if given the chance. Through original poems, Walter reimagines moments of silence, expands on fleeting lines, and provides depth to women who were left without a final word. Walter invites us to see Shakespeare’s plays...
info_outline
Stephen Greenblatt on Christopher Marlowe
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were both born in 1564, rising from working-class origins finding success in the new world of the theater. But before Shakespeare transformed English drama, Marlowe had already done so—with Tamburlaine the Great and the introduction of blank verse to the stage. As Stephen Greenblatt argues in his new biography, Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, virtually everything in the Elizabethan theater can be seen as “pre- and post-Tamburlaine.” Shakespeare learned from Marlowe, borrowed from him,...
info_outline
Al Letson on his play Julius X
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
You may know Al Letson as a journalist—he’s the host of the popular investigative podcast Reveal. Before that, he created and hosted the public radio show State of the Re:Union. But Letson is also an actor, writer, playwright, and poet. His play Julius X: A Re-envisioning of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare kicks off Folger Theatre's 2025-26 season. Julius X isn’t an adaptation of Julius Caesar — it’s a new play that borrows from Shakespeare’s language, characters, and plot to tell a different story. In Letson’s play, Julius X is a fictionalized version of...
info_outline
Director Rosa Joshi on Julius Caesar Today
Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar feels urgently contemporary in Rosa Joshi’s new production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival—one of America’s largest and longest-running theater festivals, now in its 90th season. Staged in partnership with Seattle’s upstart crow collective, the production explores the threat of autocracy, drawing on global histories of dictatorship. Performed entirely by women and nonbinary actors, Joshi’s Julius Caesar offers new perspectives on a historically male-dominated political landscape. The result is a fresh reading of...
info_outlineFred Wilson’s artistic output includes painting, sculpture, photography, and collage, among other media. But his 1992 work “Mining the Museum” at the Maryland Historical Society used the museum’s own collection as its material, radically reframing how American institutions present their art. Wilson went on to represent the United States at the 2003 Venice Biennale. For that exhibition, Wilson commissioned a black glass chandelier from the famed Venice glassmakers on the island of Murano. Wilson titled the piece “Speak of me as I am,” after the line from Shakespeare’s tragic Venetian, Othello.
In the years since then, Wilson has made several other pieces that engage with Othello, many of them made from the same evocative black Murano glass. In a new installation piece commissioned by the Folger, Wilson brings together two sides of his artistic practice: institutional critique and glass sculpture. It’s titled “God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend”—another line from Othello, this one spoken by Desdemona. The installation includes a massive black-glass mirror, ornately etched and filigreed. Visitors see themselves reflected in the mirror, along with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth that hangs opposite the mirror in the gallery. On another wall hangs an engraving of the actor Ira Aldridge in the role of Othello, alongside lines from the play written out in Aldridge’s own hand. The piece brings together questions of identity, belonging, erasure, and representation—and lets those facets reflect and refract one another, without easy answers. On this episode, Wilson discusses the piece with host Barbara Bogaev.
Fred Wilson’s installation, “God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend,” will welcome visitors to the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall when the Folger reopens on June 21.
From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 4, 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.