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In his beloved Sonnet 130, William Shakespeare writes, “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know / That music hath a far more pleasing sound.” But although readers can picture the “dark lady” that Shakespeare describes in his sonnets, something is missing: we can’t “hear her speak” for herself. The Folger’s groundbreaking exhibition, To Hear Her Speak, aims to center the voices of Black women who have drawn inspiration from, engaged with, and even lived alongside Shakespeare and his works for over 400 years. Dr. Patricia Akhimie, curator of the exhibition and director of the Folger Institute, joins Shakespeare Unlimited to to take listeners behind the scenes of the exhibition and catalog. In this episode, she provides an in-depth look at some of the fascinating items on display and shares powerful stories that have gone untold for centuries. Meet the Black women who lived and worked in Shakespeare’s London, explore Lorraine Hansberry’s living room, discover new research about the Folger’s Folio 67, and understand why Maya Angelou said, “Shakespeare was a Black woman.”

Who can explain the alchemical transformation that is rehearsal? Actors begin with words on a page and emerge with a fully formed theater production. In her documentary, Acting, director Sophie Fiennes captures the magic of actors connecting with their text and characters during a workshop with the world-renowned Cheek by Jowl theater company. Eight actors haunt the halls of Twyford Abbey, a crumbling derelict mansion on the outskirts of London as they explore scenes and monologues from Macbeth. Cheek by Jowl founders and co-artistic directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod lead the cast through their unique rehearsal process, uncovering surprising truths not just about Macbeth but about the craft of acting itself. Since 1981, Cheek by Jowl has staged critically acclaimed productions in over 50 countries and multiple languages, with a special emphasis on Shakespeare. Donnellan has directed and Ormerod has designed over 45 productions with Cheek by Jowl. In this episode, Fiennes, Donnellan, and Ormerod share about their collaborative journey, the keys to unlocking a scene, and why “life isn’t realistic.”

Long before his iconic portrayal of Logan Roy in Succession, Brian Cox trod the boards as a Shakespearean actor. For over 50 years, Cox has made his mark on both stage and screen, collecting Olivier Awards, a Primetime Emmy, a Golden Globe, and countless other accolades. He’s best known for roles in Super Troopers, The Bourne Identity, Braveheart, Rushmore, and, of course, Succession, but he’s also played Orlando in As You Like It, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Titus in Titus Andronicus, and the title role in King Lear at age 44. Cox is currently in Washington, DC to portray Johann Sebastian Bach in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of The Score. His real-life wife, Nicole Ansari-Cox, plays the powerhouse role of Anna Magdalena Bach. An internationally acclaimed actor who began her career in Germany, Ansari-Cox has acted on Broadway, the West End, the Public Theatre Vienna, and the Thèâtre du Soleil in Paris as well as on film and television. In this episode, they discuss portraying the Bachs, revisiting Lear, finding the “flow” of a scene, and why Logan Roy is “one of the most misunderstood characters in drama.” From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published October 6, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

How do you write a “complete” life of Shakespeare when very little complete information about his life exists? Four centuries after Shakespeare’s death, the legends that have grown up around him have taken on a cultural significance of their own. As Inaugural Folger Chair in Shakespeare Studies Paul Menzer puts it, “the verifiable facts of his life would fit on the back of a postcard. But the stories that we have told about them would fill a dozen phone books.” Menzer’s book, The Complete Life of William Shakespeare, dives into the life story of one of history’s most editorialized yet most enigmatic figures, navigating the space between fact and fancy. Did Shakespeare embark on a lone hero’s journey, or was his move to London more of a family road trip? Could such a great poet have also been a shrewd businessman? And why aren’t there more Shakespeares out there? In this episode, Menzer lays out the known facts of the Bard’s biography and posits how we might connect the dots on what’s missing—while throwing some “wobbles into the orbit” of well-trenched folk wisdom. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 22, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

In 1597, the first published edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet rolled off the printing press. Only a year later, the Spanish colony of Santa Fe was established. While you might not immediately think Shakespeare had much to do with the Latinx experience, Shakespeare’s career and the Spanish conquest of the Americas fit into a similar timeline. The Bard in the Borderlands, a three-volume anthology of plays by Chicanx and Indigenous playwrights, explores the possibilities of retelling Shakespeare through the culture, language, and traditions of “la frontera,” or “the borderlands.” Simply defined by co-editor Katherine Gillen as “land that was once Mexico, but… became part of the United States” after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, there is very little “simple” about the history of this region. Its complex blend of identities and experiences are expressed in fantastic transformations of Shakespeare’s work, from a re-imagining of The Tempest set in a Houston school gymnasium to Macbeth's Weird Sisters practicing brujería. In this episode, editors Kathryn Vomero Santos and Katherine Gillen and contributing playwright Andrew Siañez-De La O discuss how these works speak to Mexican American and Indigenous traditions—and what it means to create “a stranger Shakespeare.” From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 8, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Harter Music in San Antonio, Gideon Brower in Baltimore, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Production support was provided by Steven Jackson. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, In

If you were Hamlet’s lawyer, would you advise he plead not guilty by reason of insanity? Would you consider his accidental slaying of Polonius to be murder or manslaughter? These are the kinds of questions that University of Michigan Law professor Len Niehoff asks his students to consider. But why is it so important for lawyers to brush up their Shakespeare? According to Niehoff, Shakespeare and lawyers both think about everything. Some of his plays illustrate the consequences of a lawless society. Others show how people respond to the miscarriage of justice or being excluded from the legal protection of human rights. And some others, like the case of Hamlet, can help students practice thinking like lawyers. Niehoff’s book, Meeting Shakespeare at the Bar: Reading the Bard Through the Lens of the Law grew out of those classroom discussions. In this episode, Niehoff discusses his book, how his teaching practices have evolved, and what Shakespeare can teach lawyers about looking at problems from every possible angle. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published August 25, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Daniel Wanschura in Michigan and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Near the end of The Tempest, Prospero vows to retire from practicing the “rough magic” he has mastered, to break his magical staff and drown his spellbooks. After 14 seasons as Artistic Director of Canada's Stratford Festival, Antoni Cimolino has chosen to direct The Tempest as part of his final season before he, too, enters retirement. As possibly the final play Shakespeare wrote alone, The Tempest has often represented a goodbye, or at least a sea change. For Cimolino, who started his career in Stratford nearly 40 years ago, it’s a big change indeed. The documentary This Above All, premiering later this month, follows his tenure leading North America’s largest classical repertory company through a historic expansion, a pandemic, and dozens of powerful productions. In this episode, Cimolino discusses revisiting a play, the power of forgiveness, the show that sparked his love for theater, the surprising role toaster ovens played in his early career, and the “rough magic” that makes theater possible.

Imagine being able to dig through Shakespeare’s manuscripts and ask him about his writing process. Did King Lear survive in the first draft? What if Hamlet originally said, “To live or not to live?” While we can only dream about that opportunity, scholar and Everyday Shakespeare host Caroline Bicks experienced something close to it when she gained unprecedented access to the archives of another famous author: Stephen King. The Bard of Avon and the King of Horror have more in common than you might think. Both are popular and prolific authors who have been praised and derided for writing for the masses. But both also pay close attention to the sounds of words, the flow of names, and the rhythms of sentences. And sometimes, King’s work even takes inspiration from Shakespeare himself. In this episode, Bicks draws fascinating parallels between Shakespeare and King and shares how she became the first scholar permitted to explore King’s personal papers. Her book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King recounts her chance to live every scholar’s dream—while surrounded by the stuff of nightmares. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 28, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

It’s been more than 400 years since she first appeared on stage, and she’s still controversial. Margaret of Anjou appears in not one, not two, but four of Shakespeare’s plays—Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3 as well as Richard III—maturing from a young bride-to-be to a vengeful widow. She also speaks the most lines of any of Shakespeare’s female characters. Although her historical counterpart never saw battle, Shakespeare’s Margaret leads armies. And while the real Margaret was permanently exiled to France, the Shakespearean version returns to England to confront her old foes. Charles O’Malley and Scott W. Stern, co-authors of Shakespeare’s Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen, share how Margaret exists as an avatar for anxieties about women in power throughout the ages. Shakespeare’s depiction may have been influenced by Elizabeth I, but Margaret has been portrayed on stage as a witch, a seductress, an anti-fascist resistance fighter, and even an analogue for Margaret Thatcher. In this episode, O’Malley and Stern shine the spotlight on Shakespeare’s most deliciously complex anti-heroine. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 14, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Pat Mesiti-Miller in Oakland and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Shakespeare famously never attended university. But not only has his work inspired generations of scholarship, his plays, too, are filled with scholarly characters. Shakespeare, it seems, took an interest in learning. Perhaps that’s why so many people come to Shakespeare for wisdom that they can apply to their own lives. While leading the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Shakespeare Workshop, professor and dramaturg Sean Keilen noticed that people look to Shakespeare and the humanities to answer questions like “Who am I? Why am I here? And how should I live?” Keilen’s book, Shakespeare’s Scholars: Three Lessons from the Liberal Arts, illustrates how learned characters from Hamlet, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and The Tempest more can guide us to those answers —some through their wisdom, and others through their own flawed judgment. In this episode, Keilen shares vital lessons from Shakespeare’s fictional scholars in humility, self-knowledge, and perhaps most importantly, forging connection with others. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 30, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Sarah Lai Stirland in Santa Cruz and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

“Elizabeth was king, now James is queen.” So went the joke circulating around London in the 17th century. While Elizabeth I became an icon for transgressing traditional gender roles, her successor is all too often overlooked or even mocked for the same reasons. Yet James I was a multifaceted ruler who led a fascinating life—and his personal relationships only add to that complexity. For generations, historians avoided labeling the intimate relationships between James and his “favorites” as romantic. But after combing through James’s personal correspondence, historian and author Gareth Russell has uncovered compelling evidence of five significant love affairs with men. His award-winning book, The Six Loves of James I, reveals how these relationships—and his marriage to Queen Anne of Denmark—guided the course of his life and reign. James I’s story is a turbulent one, filled with assassination attempts, kidnapping, and witch hunts. It’s also a story of a man who loved “indiscreetly and obstinately,” for better or for worse. In this episode, Gareth Russell explores the untold history of a complicated king through the lens of the great loves of his life. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 16, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Pavel Barter in Belfast and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

“Is he a Communist?” During a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing in 1938, Congressman Joe Starnes probed into the politics of a writer produced by the Federal Theatre Project. The playwright in question? Christopher Marlowe. While Starnes’s blunder became legendary, Shakespeare and his contemporaries continued to come up throughout the Red Scare years. Something about early modern poetry and plays often rang as disquietingly topical. In her book, A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the Red Scare, Marjorie Garber reveals how literature has always posed a threat to authority, a power of which Shakespeare was well aware. As she puts it, “poetry makes trouble all the time.” This episode explores how Shakespeare became a magnet for suspicion during the Red Scare—and how he spoke to the moment from beyond the grave. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 5, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Philip Bodger in Lewes, England and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc. Marjorie Garber is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Research Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of twenty books, including Shakespeare in Bloomsbury and A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the Red Scare. She lives in London, UK. Learn more about Marjorie Garber and her work at her website.

One small step into the wrong classroom becomes a giant leap into a new life as a Shakespearean actor. That’s how Jacob Ming-Trent tells it in his remarkable one-man tour-de-force, How Shakespeare Saved My Life. As the Folger prepares to welcome How Shakespeare Saved My Life to the stage this June, Ming-Trent joins us to delve deeper into his story. Ming-Trent is no stranger to the Folger stage, having previously presented How Shakespeare Saved My Life at the 2024 Reading Room Festival and portrayed Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2022. A multitalented stage and screen actor, he has appeared in Broadway musicals from Gypsy to Shrek, television series like Watchmen and Ray Donovan, and films including The Forty-Year-Old Version and Friendship. In this episode, Ming-Trent presents Shakespeare as an urban poet in the vein of Tupac and Biggie. He breaks down the inspiration behind How Shakespeare Saved My Life and how he brings his own experience to his interpretation of Shakespeare’s words, rearranging and reframing them to create something uniquely personal.

A century after Shakespeare’s death, his words were in danger of being forgotten. While plays like King Lear and Othello still played to packed houses across England, audiences saw only the bowdlerized versions—censored, rewritten, and stripped of anything that could be considered distasteful. How, then, did Shakespeare’s original works re-emerge? Thank the Shakespeare Ladies Club, a group of influential women who rescued his reputation(and his double entendres) from obscurity. In their book, The Shakespeare Ladies Club: The Forgotten Women Who Saved the Bawdy Bard, Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth uncover the club’s unsung contributions to Shakespeare’s legacy. Thanks to the Hainsworths, Westminster Abbey has now officially recognized the Shakespeare Ladies Club for their campaign to memorialize Shakespeare in Poets’ Corner. But, they reveal, the club’s influence goes even deeper than that. In this episode, Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth shine a light on this remarkable group of women and how they made Shakespeare the cultural icon he is today.

Is Shakespeare still Shakespeare even if every word is changed? While Shakespeare’s work is often hailed for its universality, its meter, metaphor, and wordplay pose special challenges for translators. How do you convey the rhythm and spirit of Shakespeare’s words in a language that follows fundamentally different rules? Author and translator Daniel Hahn explores these questions in his book, If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. He interviews translators from around the world, providing unique perspectives on Shakespeare’s language and impact. Some of Shakespeare’s best-known lines can prove the most difficult to capture, like Henry V’s “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Even something seemingly simple like Lady Macbeth’s “Are you a man?” may be tricky to translate when the word “man” carries different connotations in different languages. In this episode, Hahn dives into the challenges and rewards of translating Shakespeare, exploring not only what is lost in translation, but also what is gained.