Everyday Shakespeare – Details, episodes & analysis

Shakespeare's great tragedy Hamlet is having a moment. Between director Chloe Zhao's film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's bestselling novel, Hamnet, and Taylor Swift's song "The Fate of Ophelia," two of Shakespeare's most tragic characters have hit pop culture payday. In this episode, we explore these creative iterations of Shakespeare's life and work, and why Hamlet and Ophelia continue to resonate. We talk about the concept of Catholic Purgatory, and how Zhao's film captures the emotional power of this in-between spiritual space — one that haunts Shakespeare's original play and (as we discuss) his original audiences. In the second half of the episode, we give Ophelia extra time in the spotlight as we mine the Victorian origin stories that solidified her reputation as nothing more than a beautiful, hysterical girl who drowns herself; and then we turn to the play itself, where she's alive and fully sane most of the time, and listen to what she's really saying.

It's human nature to love the spectacle of a power couple, whether it's a celebrity marriage proposal or corporate heavyweights having some adulterous fun at a Coldplay concert. But how did people get their fix before social media, kiss-cams, and People Magazine? In this episode, we explore Shakespeare's juiciest stories of famous men and women--including Henry VIII, his multiple wives, and G.O.A.T power couple Antony and Cleopatra—as well as the fans who gobbled up all their faults and follies.

Long before Photoshop and the Varsity Blues scandal, wealthy families have been trying to game the college admissions process. In this episode, we explore why affluent families started to outnumber "poor scholars" like Hamlet's friend Horatio during the mid-sixteenth century and how money and social class affected life at Oxford and Cambridge. Shakespeare, who never attended university, has an interesting perspective on all this, which we take a look at alongside a document that is the early modern equivalent of an insider's guide to college life. From rich slackers who believe themselves "above the law" to kids who come home from college preaching their "superior" knowledge to their weary parents, there's a lot that will sound familiar. 

Want more? Check out:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-am-lady-macbeth-and-your-facebook-post-about-your-kids-early-acceptance-to-harvard-really-pisses-me-off

They may not have called it "memoir," but early modern English authors were producing all kinds of life-writing, from snarky private diaries to published accounts of religious conversion and manifestos on breast-feeding. Whether or not Shakespeare's work contains anything autobiographical remains a matter of speculation, but he certainly understood the desire to control how your life story would be recorded for posterity. In this episode, we talk about the theme of life-writing in Shakespeare's work and look at some actual autobiographies written by his contemporaries. A wealthy and well-educated daughter of country gentry, Elizabeth Isham wrote her Book of Remembrance at age thirty. Although her intended readers were her family members and not the public, her nearly sixty-thousand-word book bears the closest resemblance to our modern memoir genre, with its familiar themes--sibling rivalry, mental illness, societal pressure on women--and its contemporary style of self-reflection. Michelle, whose new book is Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare, explains how Isham's ability to make sense of her life was truly ahead of her time. 

In this episode, we're talking with Austin Tichenor, co-Artistic Director of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and longtime actor, author, podcaster, and Folger Shakespeare Library blogger. Austin takes us back to the early Renaissance Faire days of the RSC, and tells us about the Company's experiences reducing other Great Works and Notable Events—from being banned in Belfast for their Bible play to revising their "Compete History of America (Abridged)" to meet our current political moment.

We're kicking off our second season by spotlighting the work of bookmakers and booksellers — in Shakespeare's day and ours. We recorded this episode in front of a live audience at the Brookline Booksmith, a fabulous independent bookstore just outside of Boston, where we took the standing-room-only crowd into the wild world of bookstall shenanigans, bawdy ballads, and book banning. It's only fun 'til someone loses a hand.

Ever wonder where the line "My kingdom for a horse!" came from? Shakespeare wrote it for King Richard III when he decided to dramatize England's bloodiest civil war, ending it with the tyrant Richard fighting on foot, abandoned by his horse and all his former followers. It's just one of many ways Shakespeare spun the story of Richard and helped turn him into the notorious villain he remains today in our popular imagination. In this episode, we explore the blurry lines between fake news and recorded facts by taking a close look at Richard III, the man and the myth. We'll explore the "history" of his ominous birth and physical deformity, and we'll talk about how Shakespeare's theater was a political platform —a stage that rivals our modern-day media outlets. Shakespeare wasn't above using it to spread biased narratives, but he also used his history plays to reflect on why these stories are so seductive, and how they can erode civil discourse.  

For many of us, the New Year means new resolutions about getting in shape. But often the goal isn't just to improve our health: there's a lot of magical thinking at work telling us that shedding five pounds will turn us into happier, more successful people. Shakespeare and his contemporaries didn't track their BMI, but, like us, they attached profound significance (and sometimes judginess) to people's eating and drinking habits. In this episode, we look at some general advice about diet and exercise back in the day, and talk about how Shakespeare's plays give us the real skinny on early modern "fat shaming." We'll also attempt to answer some burning questions, like:  "What exercise fad would Lady Macbeth sign up for?" and "What if Romeo and Juliet had matching Apple Watches?"  

Shakespeare wasn't eating leftover Thanksgiving turkey and doing online shopping on Black Friday, but he definitely would have been gearing up for the Christmas season, which included twelve full days of festivities. In this episode, we explore the wild side of Christmas celebrations in Shakespeare's England, including the appointment of a Lord of Misrule as a designated agent of chaos. We also take a look at the Puritan Scrooges who wanted to cancel the holiday altogether, and read some dramatic defenses of Christmas inspired by all the controversy. 

Want more Shakespeare for the holidays?  Check out Caroline and Michelle's "Letters To Santa Written By Shakespeare Characters" on McSweeney's.net.

It's the Jewish High Holiday season, and we're wrapping up our first season with a look back at what Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have known and thought about Jews and their religious practices. Although English Protestants expressed plenty of anxiety and hostility towards Jews, continuing a long tradition of the same, they also respected the Jews' status as God's chosen people and their fundamental role in the scripture. In this episode, we explore these complexities by looking at a piece of travel writing by an Englishman in Venice and talking about Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice.