Podcasts
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That Old And Antique Song We Heard Last Night
This podcast, part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series for the Folger Shakespeare Library, looks at musical hints in Shakespeare that have been flying over the heads of most audiences and readers for 400 years. Ross Duffin is the author of the award-winning Shakespeare’s Songbook, a title that only suggests the book’s broader story. Duffin includes the songs performed within Shakespeare’s plays—but also those that are not sung, but simply alluded to. Familiar to audiences of the day, these songs’ words or phrases added meaning to the plays—long-lost implications and suggestions that his book seeks to restore.
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All Mirth and No Matter
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series for the Folger Shakespeare Library. Modern audiences sometimes go from roaring with laughter to scratching their heads when it comes to enjoying Shakespeare’s jokes four hundred years later. This podcast looks at how (and why) has “what’s funny” has changed over the years—and what’s still a guaranteed belly laugh.
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Shakespeare and Insane Asylums
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series for the Folger Shakespeare Library. Plenty of people today consider Shakespeare a literary genius, a pillar of theater history, a gifted writer of timeless love poems, and more. But even the most over-the-top contemporary admirer of Shakesepeare is unlikely to consider him a pioneer of modern medical science… much less forensic psychiatry. Hard as it may be to believe, however, there was a strange period in American history when that’s exactly how William Shakespeare was seen in both law and medicine.
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Bless Thee! Thou Art Translated
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series for the Folger Shakespeare Library. What happens when Shakespeare’s work is translated into foreign languages? Is it still Shakespeare, or does something fundamental to the original evaporate in the process? This podcast explores that question.
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Let the Sounds of Music Creep in Our Ears
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series from the Folger Shakespeare Library. How can young people connect with Shakespeare? It’s a question that confronts each generation. Members of Taffety Punk, a Washington, DC, theater company, have taken to heart the mission of bringing Shakespeare into the 21st century and in this podcast, we hear from their Artistic Director.
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Shakespeare Outdoors
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series for the Folger Shakespeare Library. Shakespeare under the stars is a long-standing tradition in America—and elsewhere in the English-speaking world and beyond. This podcast explains how that came to happen.
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I, That Am Rudely Stamped
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series for the Folger Shakespeare Library. Shakespeare not only talked about his own times; he also wrote history plays that showed us the past—though it was a past filtered through the politics and prejudices of Shakespeare’s present. Questions about this came up recently when a body was found in a Leicester, England, parking lot. That body is now widely believed to be that of King Richard III. Among the many issues raised, along with that body, are questions about who the real Richard III was, versus the dramatic character that we’ve all come to know from stage and film — questions answered in this podcast.
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Women Merely Players
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series from the Folger Shakespeare Library. In Shakespeare’s time, only men appeared on stage, with teenage boys playing the women’s parts. Today, women play women and sometimes men—and vice-versa. In this podcast we have gathered some of the best-known actresses in the Folger’s home town, Washington, DC, to talk about their experiences on stage with Shakespeare.
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Cowards Die Many Times Before Their Deaths, the Valiant Never Taste of Death but Once
Part of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series from the Folger Shakespeare Library. While Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on South Africa’s Robben Island, one of the other political prisoners managed to retain a copy of Shakespeare’s complete works, which was secretly circulated through the group. At that prisoner’s request, many of the others—including Mandela—signed their names next to their favorite passages. In this podcast, Shakespeare scholar David Schalkwyk shares some personal history and reveals what Shakespeare might have meant to the men who signed the Robben Island Shakespeare.
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Black and Navy Blue
Produced for ArtsEdge at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Music has been vitally important in helping to change culture in a way and in a place you might not expect – race relations in the United States Navy. The Navy was once the most integrated of the US military services. There was a time when African-Americans could serve in the Navy and nowhere else. But over time, when society changed, the Navy because the branch of service where racism and discrimination were most deeply engrained. Each time that the Navy moved to change its racial discrimination, it turned to musicians to be the pioneers.
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