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Category: Reflections and Essays

“Look with thine ears”: The Challenges and Rewards of Audio Shakespeare, Part Two

Part One of this article (71.2) established that Shakespeare performance historians have shamefully neglected audio productions. Attention was eventually paid […]

“Look with thine ears”: The Challenges and Rewards of Audio Shakespeare, Part One

Shakespeare scholars ignored audio performances for decades, even though audio productions far outnumber screen adaptations.[1] Audio was mostly relegated to […]

Shakespeare on Screen: Coronavirus Edition, Part Two

“Part One” (69.2) showed that the American Shakespeare Center and the Flatwater Shakespeare Company streamed subprofessional video captures during the […]

Here and There

[“Here and There” is a title I’ve used over the years, most recently three years ago, for reflections on various […]

Shakespeare on Screen: Coronavirus Edition, Part One

The Covid-19 lockdown disrupted lives and livelihoods, some beyond repair. Theatre companies were forced to cancel shows already open and […]

Shakespeare’s “Jealousy . . . The Green-Ey’d Monster”

Shakespeare’s now famous descriptions of jealousy are apparently unique.  The Oxford English Dictionary records the first appearance of “green-eyed jealousy” […]

Silence, Silences, and Shakespeare’s Silence

As a theatre historian my elusive goal over four decades has been to reconstruct what the original playgoers actually saw […]

Trespassing on Sacred Ground: The Politics of Religion in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool 

Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj’s Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet—Maqbool (2003), Omkara (2006), and Haider (2014) respectively—use Shakespeare’s […]

“’Spirits from the Vasty Deep’ and Beyond: Shakespeare in the Age of Zoom

Since Covid-19 put its “girdle round the earth” (Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1), Shakespearean theatrical companies and practitioners have struggled to […]

Shakespeare’s Transformative Tempests

Although Shakespeare was born in the Warwickshire countryside, he spent much of his adult life in London, the busy hub […]

Queen or “any flax-wench”?: Household Metaphor and Female Duality in The Winter’s Tale

Why, as audiences have felt, when Queen Hermione obeys her husband King Leontes’ request to persuade their guest Polixenes to […]

Gaslighting the Gallery: Sexual Violence in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Over the last decade, individuals who have been sexually harassed, assaulted, and violated have found the courage, the community, and […]