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.

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.

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.

For many of us, the New Year means new resolutions about getting in shape. But often the goal isn't just to improve our health: there's a lot of magical thinking at work telling us that shedding five pounds will turn us into happier, more successful people. Shakespeare and his contemporaries didn't track their BMI, but, like us, they attached profound significance (and sometimes judginess) to people's eating and drinking habits. In this episode, we look at some general advice about diet and exercise back in the day, and talk about how Shakespeare's plays give us the real skinny on early modern "fat shaming." We'll also attempt to answer some burning questions, like: "What exercise fad would Lady Macbeth sign up for?" and "What if Romeo and Juliet had matching Apple Watches?"

It's the Jewish High Holiday season, and we're wrapping up our first season with a look back at what Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have known and thought about Jews and their religious practices. Although English Protestants expressed plenty of anxiety and hostility towards Jews, continuing a long tradition of the same, they also respected the Jews' status as God's chosen people and their fundamental role in the scripture. In this episode, we explore these complexities by looking at a piece of travel writing by an Englishman in Venice and talking about Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice.

In this episode, New York Times-bestselling author and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro joins us to talk about his book Shakespeare in a Divided America and his work with the New York Public Theater. Dr. Shapiro explains how and why Shakespeare has been a lightning rod for the American culture wars—from the 1849 Astor Place Riot to a recent state ban on A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shakespeare loved to give people a good laugh and had an arsenal of methods to do so. And his humor isn't confined to the plays labeled "comedies"; even the great tragedies deliver moments of hilarity. Actor and comedian Rachel Dratch joins us here to talk about the business of being funny and to help us see how Shakespeare's witty comebacks and jig-dancing clowns connect to the comedy world today.

According to a recent study, American men are in a "friend recession." In this episode we explore ideals of male-male friendship back in Shakespeare's day. Why did they falter, and when did they blossom? We'll look at some compelling examples of true male bonding from Shakespeare's plays, and also consider some epic friendship fails (hint: if your name is Antonio, you might think twice about lending your younger, hotter 'bestie' all your money).