Shakespeare unlimited: an index in progress – 1 (updated)

In this post:

Sources of Shakespeare’s plays

Non dramatic works by Shakespeare

I have gone through all the available episodes of Shakespeare Unlimited, the incredible podcast produced by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, and I would like to give something in return: I am going to produce an index of episodes, which may spread the word a little. At the same time, it could be useful to teachers like me. I’ll do it a bit at a time. I am not a very systematic sort of person but I’ll do my best.

Episodes about the sources of Shakespeare’s plays:

• The most interesting was, in my opinion, the one on George North’s manuscript. Two scholars tell us how they identified a possible (and apparently very likely) source for Shakespeare’s historical plays, a manuscript that had been digitized and then forgotten: A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels . https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/george-north-manuscript/

Besides the excitement for a new source, what makes the episode very interesting is that it explains how so-called antiplagiarism software works, relying especially on the occurence of certain combinations of vocabulary. In North’s manuscript, when Richard III is discussed, his deformity and consequent resentment are expressed with vocabulary that is echoed in the opening speech of The tragedy of Richard III. Something similar happens in Richard II and the recounting of Jack Cade’s execution in A Brief Discourse.

• Jonathan Bate on Shakespeare and the classics investigates the classical sources of some of Shakespeare’s plays, from Plutarch to Plautus. It explores the kind of education a boy would receive at a grammar school such as the one the dramatist attended in Stratford.

https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/bate-classics/

• Shakespeare and folktales is an interview to Charlotte Artese, who wrote a book on the fairy tales and folklore which originated elements in some of Shakespeare’s plays. Folk sources are identified for a variety of comedies and tragedies, from Lear to The merchant of Venice and many others. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/artese-folktales/

Episodes on non dramatic works by Shakespeare. They are actually all on the sonnets.

• The early years of Shakespeare’s sonnets (16th and 17th centuries) https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/sonnets-kingsley-smith/ and
• The long life of Shakespeare’s sonnets (18th century to today) are both interviews to Professor Jane Kingsley-Smith on how the collection was first received and then became the paragon of Elizabethan poetry they are now. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/sonnets-kingsley-smith-part2/

A third episode, an interview to Dr. Paul Edmondson, is quite different and, I think, extremely interesting. It rejects all the received notions we often accept as facts when we categorize the sonnets: that they are about a Dark lady and a Fair Youth, that there is a group of Marriage sonnets and another of Immortality sonnets. The episode is called

• All the sonnets of Shakespeare, like the book that Dr. Edomonson has written with Sir Stanley Wells. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/all-the-sonnets-edmondson/

Finally, one of the earliest episodes I listened to was Billy Collins on writing short poems and reading Shakespeare’s sonnets

• https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/billy-collins/. It is a pleasant conversation with the former US Poet Laureate which also includes his own

Sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines. Well, thirteen now,
and after this one, just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love’s storm-tossed sea,
then only 10 more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played,
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,

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