The First Folio has been called “incomparably the most important work in the English language.”  Published in 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare’s death, and purportedly assembled by members of his theater company, the First Folio is the earliest collection of Shakespeare plays. Many of the plays had never before been in print. The book also provided a first glimpse at the face of the author, in the famous engraving by Martin Droeshout. There are curiosities about the First Folio...

Episode 6 with Sabrina Feldman Ben Jonson and other writers of Shakespeare’s time satirized a social-climbing playwright-actor who stole their words and passed them off as his own. In epigrams, stories, and plays they attacked this pretentious plagiarist, who made a lucrative career by patching together popular plays out of bits and pieces from their works. These satires portray an uncultured, overdressed fellow who (as one of Jonson’s caricatures) acquires a coat of arms so he can be called...

Is Othello a comedy gone wrong? Richard Whalen reveals the surprising connections between Shakespeare's Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice and Commedia dell'Arte, the energetic, improvised street theater from 16th century Italy. Stock figures of Commedia dell'Arte bear more than a coincidental resemblance to the 7 main characters of Othello. The links between Othello and Commedia dell'Arte offer insights into such perplexities as Iago's extreme capacity for evil and Othello's curious...

What are the Shakespeare Apocrypha? And how do we explain the close ties between some of these plays and the works universally accepted as Shakespeare’s? Dramas like Locrine, The London Prodigall, the superhit Mucedorus, and others were attributed to William Shakespeare during the 17th century, in several cases during the Stratford man’s lifetime. In this episode, Allan Armstrong interviews Dr. Sabrina Feldman, author of The Apocryphal William Shakespeare, to discover the story behind these...

Could A Midsummer Night's Dream contain allegorical references that satirize Queen Elizabeth's long & melodramatic courtship with the Duc of Alencon? Join Earl Showerman as we visit the court of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1570s. Statesmen, nobles, and perhaps even the queen herself are divided over whether or not Elizabeth should marry the younger brother of the King of France. Dramatics ensue onstage and off, in a surprisingly strange and significant episode of English history. And what...

Themes of law in Hamlet and Shakespeare's other plays and poetry. Can the intricacies of Elizabethan Law shed new light on the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? In this fascinating interview with attorney Tom Regnier, we look at how Shakespeare uses the law in the plays and Sonnets, why scholars and lawyers have claimed that Shakespeare had legal training, and — surprisingly — how themes of English law run throughout the play Hamlet. The examination of early modern English law offers...

A look at William Shakespeare's Last Will & Testament. What what can we learn about what he owned, who he remembered, what he cared about?  The most personal document remaining from the life of William Shakespeare is his Last Will & Testament.  Researcher Bonner Miller Cutting looked at 3,000 wills from Shakespeare’s day, and in this interview she describes what she learned about the daily lives of people of that era and about Gentle Will from Stratford-upon-Avon.