Bradin Cormack explores various plays—including “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and “Antony and Cleopatra”—in which Shakespeare approaches the problem of characterization by analyzing the basic shape of action itself. Cormack is the author of “A Power to Do Justice” and co-editor of “Shakespeare and the...

David Schalkwyk, former director of research at the Folger Shakespeare Library and author of “Hamlet’s Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare,” speaks about the copy of “The Complete Works of Shakespeare” that was secretly circulated, annotated, and signed by Nelson Mandela and other political...

History is usually seen as a grand narrative across nations and across time; for Shakespeare it was individualized, the story of characters inscribed onto lives. Peter Holland, professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, examines how our stories about Shakespeare's own life offer a new...