Shakespeare

Noah Millman on the promise and pitfalls of cross-gender casting in Shakespeare.

An ex-convict named Abraham Shakespeare thought he had hit the big time in 2006. He won $30 million in the Quick-Pick, one of Florida’s state lottery games. Women flocked to him, including one named Dee Dee Moore, who had a genius for embezzlement. By 2008, Shakespeare was a missing person. Police…

In 2016, during the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, the Bard was feted by dozens of books, hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, performances of his plays, lectures, and a Shakespeare Day gala attended by Prince Charles himself. The London Tube map replaced the names of its…

Don’t miss the newest episode in the Internet video series Conversations with Bill Kristol. The Weekly Standard’s editor at large talks with University of Virginia professor Paul Cantor about Shakespeare’s Rome. How do politics contend with philosophy? Can a republic survive becoming an empire?…

This summer, the Shakespeare Theater Company has brought Othello to the stage for its annual “Free For All,” a decades-old Washington, D.C., tradition that offers a Shakespeare classic to the public free of charge. And, no, it’s not like most other freebies. Unlike Costco samples, junk mail, and…

In the traditions and superstitions of the theater, Macbeth is known simply as "the Scottish play." To refer to it by name would be, for some never-explained reason, bad luck. Yet, as far as oblique references, this one provides a fairly apt summary of the sense of the play. At its heart, it is a…

If there were ever any doubt that Hamlet is the greatest of all Shakespeare plays—even perhaps the greatest play ever written—then Dominic Dromgoole's newest book puts any discussion to rest. In 2014, to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, Dromgoole, then artistic director of…

#ShakespeareSoWhite!

When I say that Portraits of Shakespeare is the definitive history of visual depictions of William Shakespeare, it should not be taken as too high praise: There are only three images of the man that are likely contemporaneous with him. But Katherine Duncan-Jones, emerita fellow at Somerville…

In Shakespeare's plays, the forest is always a magical place, where identity itself becomes more fluid. The idea of casting off one's clothes to don an altogether new identity is a theme in several of the comedies, but perhaps never to the same degree as in As You Like It, which is currently…

When I say that Portraits of Shakespeare is the definitive history of visual depictions of William Shakespeare, it should not be taken as too high praise: There are only three images of the man that are likely contemporaneous with him. But Katherine Duncan-Jones, emerita fellow at Somerville…

To be honest, The Scrapbook is nowhere near as exercised as it might be about the removal, by a gaggle of undergraduates, of William Shakespeare's portrait from its prominent position on the wall of an English department staircase at the University of Pennsylvania. The department had already…

To be honest, The Scrapbook is nowhere near as exercised as it might be about the removal, by a gaggle of undergraduates, of William Shakespeare’s portrait from its prominent position on the wall of an English department staircase at the University of Pennsylvania. The department had already…

University of Pennsylvania students took down a large, centrally-located portrait of Shakespeare from the English Department to send a message of inclusivity, according to the department's chair.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, let me be the first to tell you that this year marks the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. There have been essays on nearly every aspect of the Bard's life: his religion, his money, his politics, his view of gender…

Sometimes a play's popularity becomes its greatest weakness. When the audience knows—or even thinks it knows—what will happen, and how, and who the characters are, and what to think about their motives and flaws and failings, the performance itself risks being buried under the weight of…

Did you know this year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death? Theater-rats have been told this a hundred times by now, but it bears reconsidering. In the course of four centuries, audiences have remained entranced by his work—the same plots, characters, and dialogue—unchanged, ever since.

If you've been casting around since April trying to find a way to celebrate Shakespeare's 400th deathday, look no further than The Merchant of Venice, just now completing its run at the Kennedy Center. Normally you should be mortified to forget such an occasion, but the rules of etiquette begin to…

Recently, I attended a marvelous performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with my twin three-year-olds, a one-year-old, and my wife.

Only a very rude mechanical could have failed to notice that this past April marked the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It has been a year of discoveries. In a private library on the Isle of Bute, a copy of a vamped First Folio came to light, along with the meaning of the word vamped. And…

In last week's Kristol Clear newsletter (sign up here for free!), the boss held a competition to honor the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

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April 23, 1616 — a date which will live in infamy. At least in literary circles. For on that date both Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare died. To be sure, they did not die on the same day. At the time, Spain had adopted the new Gregorian calendar, while England was still on the old Julian…

The play may bear Othello’s name, but the new production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is Iago's. From the moment Jonno Roberts first appears on the nearly empty stage, the audience's entire attention is his. Menacing, manipulative, and at times raging, he controls the stage, keeping an entire…

The greatest “recognition” scene in Western literature takes place in Homer’s Odyssey, and occurs between storm-buffeted Odysseus and long-suffering Penelope. Shakespeare’s Pericles, a play with deep Hellenic—and specifically Homeric and Sophoclean—undertones, is its closest rival in the portrayal…

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is currently playing at Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre, must be a nightmare to direct.

A recent headline in the New York Times announced: “Metropolitan Opera Says Its ‘Otello’ Tenor Will Not Wear Blackface.” Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, made clear that the decision not to use any dark makeup on its white tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko in the Met’s new production of Verdi’s…

Today is Shakespeare’s 451st birthday. Around the world, performances and recitals will be put on in a host of languages, and in a multitude of countries. There is something in Shakespeare’s art wherein everyone tends to find a positive reflection of their community and values, which explains the…

In the latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol, the boss sits down with Paul Cantor:

There is a new reason to visit London. It is wooden, but lively. Old, but new. Shadowy, but luminous. The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is a reconstruction of what an indoor theater might have looked and felt like around 1600, when Shakespeare was 36 and at the height of his career as an actor,…

On the cover of Ian Donaldson’s new biography of Ben Jonson (1572-1637) there is a portrait of the poet and dramatist by the Flemish painter Abraham van Blyenberch showing him regarding the viewer with amused intentness, as if poised to make some choice rejoinder. Here is the man of the theater,…

Early this century, on New York's Lower East Side, where the Yiddish theater thrived and Shakespeare was an audience favorite, the playbill for a famous Second Avenue production read: "Hamlet, bei William Shakespeare, fartaytch un farbessert" -- Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, translated and…