Since December 2017, I’ve contributed monthly essays about the intersection of Shakespeare and popular culture for the Folger Shakespeare Library‘s “Shakespeare & Beyond” blog. Topics I’ve written about include:
- how Shakespeare invented anti-heroes like Tony Soprano and Walter White;
- why it’s impossible for Shakespeare’s History plays — and theater in general — to be adequate records of What Really Happened;
- how Shakespeare’s life and work shows up so much in contemporary entertainment like WandaVision, The Crown, Star Trek, and The Lion King;
- how Hamlet is the poster child for pandemic frustration;
- how Shakespeare invented the tentpole media franchise;
- why one of Shakespeare’s most moving love triangles isn’t romantic, it’s filial;
- how one director carved an emotional path through the verbal undergrowth of Love’s Labor’s Lost;
- why Twelfth Night is the Hamlet of Shakespeare’s comedies;
- the relationship between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein;
- how today’s theater etiquette is nothing compared to the “etiquette” in Shakespeare’s day;
- and why, though “to thine own self be true” is actually great advice, figuring out who thine own self is is even more important.
You can find all my Folger essays here, and subscribe to their “Shakespeare & Beyond” blog here.
