First Thoughts

Shakespeare and God

Lee Oser joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature. Continue Reading »

Reading the Bard in 2020

The Shakespeare-in-a-year reading plan, updated for 2020! Continue Reading »

A Reader's Resolution for 2019

The Shakespeare-in-a-year reading plan, newly updated for 2019! Continue Reading »

A Reader’s Resolution for 2018

With our Shakespeare-in-a-year plan, you can make 2018 the year you finally get around to reading more of the Bard.  Continue Reading »

From Greatness to Inclusivity

When a humanities department selects its materials because they reflect identity groups, it no longer functions as a humanities department.
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A Daily Plan for Reading Shakespeare

Yes, you can read all of Shakespeare's works in a year. Continue Reading »

What We've Been Reading—12.9.16

I've been immersed in Shakespeare's King Lear, but not solely as a text on a page. I'm acting in a production of the play here in New York City, playing the King of France and the Servant who stands up to Cornwall in the famous eye-gouging scene. Continue Reading »

“To Trump, or Not to Trump”

To Trump, or not to Trump, that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the land to suffer
The tweets and twaddles of outrageous baseness
Or to take arms against an orange menace
And, by opposing…do what? . . . . Continue Reading »

Shakespeare Through Anecdotes

Did you hear the one where . . . ?

Paul Menzer has heard it. He’s heard the one with the drunk Richard III, the one with the fat Ghost of Hamlet’s Father stuck in the trapdoor, the one with the father–daughter pair playing Romeo and ­Juliet, the one where Othello’s makeup rubs off on Desdemona’s face to give her a beard. In fact, he’s probably heard several variations on any given Shakespearean anecdote, a handful verifiable, but most patently recycled, exaggerated, or apocryphal—yet in a different sense, in Menzer’s paradoxical view, no less true. Continue Reading »

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Last year I posted in this space a reading plan of my own devising for working through all of Shakespeare's works. I made some work for myself when I created this plan, because I settled on reading plays Monday through Friday, and sonnets and other poems on weekends. Thus it needs annual . . . . Continue Reading »