Advertise on podcast: Everyday Shakespeare

In this episode, we kick off summer by taking to the sea with Shakespeare. Long before all-you-can-eat buffets, pickleball on the lido deck, and Norovirus outbreaks, Shakespeare was already imagining the pleasures and perils of ocean cruises. From the maritime disaster of his early play The Comedy of Errors to the storm-tossed misadventures of his late romances Pericles and The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare loved to imagine what might happen when friends and family were stuck on board together. We'll also look at a real-life 1610 account of a shipwreck-turned-"White Lotus"-getaway, and a seventeenth-century science fiction novel about a Young Lady whose nightmare cruise turns into the ultimate female fantasy. Join us as we set a course for adventure and our minds on some very weird romance.

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.

We've gone a little nuts when it comes to celebrating our kids' milestones, like their birthdays and graduations. We've even started inventing new ones (hello, Bed Parties??), which means we're buying even more party swag. In this episode, we explore how families in Shakespeare's day celebrated their kids' big rites of passage. Did they make themselves crazy planning the best christening party ever? How did they mark little William's gold medal in pee-wee fencing? What did life look like before bouncy castles and Gender Reveal cakes?

Why mess with Shakespeare's perfectly good script of Romeo and Juliet? In this interview, Tim Bogart, writer and director of Juliet and Romeo (release date, May 9, 2025), explains his reasons—historical, personal, and otherwise—for getting down and dirty with some wild revisions of Shakespeare's tragedy. He's got big ideas--and big stars--for what is the first of a planned film trilogy. Not to mention that Rebel Wilson's turn at Lady Capulet might be the best example of "playing against type" in recent memory.

From Frankenstein to The Shining, tales of extreme wintery conditions have always been a hit. In this episode, we talk about some of the real-life fun people had when things got very cold in Shakespeare's day—like going to frost fairs on the frozen Thames river—and we discuss some of the not-so-fun tragedies they endured. Finally, we turn to the story of Demeter and Persephone (a Greek myth that explained why we have winter) and to Shakespeare's late play The Winter's Tale, which harnesses the joys and tragedies that underlie all of these real and mythical tales of winter.

Thanks to modern technology, tracking your children (and anyone else willing to join your Life360 Circle) has never been easier. But even in Shakespeare's pre-iphone days, people found ways to keep tabs on their kids. Sometimes this involved enlisting your child's friends to spy on him, or sending the family Clown or wet-nurse to locate your stray daughter. And sometimes the job called for throwing on a fake beard yourself to make sure your son's fling with the hot shepherdess he met on his gap year wasn't turning into something serious. We'll be looking at all of these methods and more as we explore the timeless anxieties that grip parents and guardians when they send their precious charges into the world—and then track their every move.

We're getting our Season Three Party started by exploring the origins of a terrifying creature: the Childless Cat Lady. Whether she has warts and a broom, or she's selling out concert stadiums, this woman means Trouble. But when and how did this connection between single ladies and their feline friends get started? And was it always a negative thing? In this episode, we discover some answers as we travel back in time from the Target Halloween aisle to the Medieval Church and the Shakespearean stage. We guarantee you're in for some surprises. BOO!

In this episode, James Shapiro, award-winning author and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, joins us to talk about his most recent book, The Playbook: A Story of Theatre, Democracy and the Making of a Culture War. With his characteristic investigative research and sleuth work, Shapiro has uncovered the truth behind the spectacular rise and fall of Roosevelt's New Deal-funded Federal Theatre Project in the late 1930s. At the heart of Shapiro's work is his point that theater is essential to a democracy. The shocking details behind the demise of the public, progressive FTP, Shapiro makes clear, lay the groundwork for the threats to democracy in America today.

These days, everyone seems to be talking about polyamory-- the practice of engaging simultaneously in more than one romantic and/or sexual relationship, with the full consent of everyone involved. According to a recent study, 1 in 9 Americans has tried polyamory, and 1 in 6 would like to try it. This got us wondering: Could people in Shakespeare's day have known about and experienced anything resembling what we now identify as polyamorous desires and lifestyles? In this episode, we take a deep dive into two of Shakespeare's cross-dressing comedies, As You Like It and Twelfth Night, to explore some potential polyamory prototypes.

It's time to bust out the dried macaroni, glitter glue, and home-made Foot Rub "Coupons," because Mother's Day is just around the corner. Mothers are missing from a lot of Shakespeare's plays, but he's still got a lot of moms who are very much alive and kicking (unless they're buried alive). In this Very Special Holiday Episode, we give shout-outs to some of Shakespeare's most suffering, unsung moms and imagine what kinds of Mother's Day gifts their ungrateful kids and partners might have given them. Trust us, these ladies all deserve a 16-year spa vacation.

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   https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/common-app-essays-by-shakespeare-characters

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.