Celebrate Creativity

Send us Fan Mail Part 1 — Polonius coaches surveillance (Polonius + Reynaldo) Polonius sends Reynaldo to Paris with money and messages for Laertes. But Polonius doesn’t say, “Go check on my son like a normal person.” He says—basically—“Go investigate my son.” Here’s the tactic, and it’s nasty in a very realistic way: Polonius tells Reynaldo: Don’t ask directly, “How is Laertes behaving?” Instead,...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5 — the scene where the ghost finally speaks. And I want to emphasize something from the start: The ghost’s message doesn’t just give Hamlet information. It changes Hamlet’s operating system. It changes what Hamlet thinks the world is. It changes what Hamlet thinks he must do. And it changes what kind of person Hamlet is allowed to be from this...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4. Act 1, Scene 2 gave us the court saying, “Get over it.” Act 1, Scene 3 gave us family advice that’s really control. Now Scene 4 takes us back to the battlements — the cold night air — where the play asks a different question: When truth appears in an unsettling form… Do you follow it? GEORGE: Master Shakespeare, we’ve moved from court politic...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Master Shakespeare, why do we go from the public court scene into this private household scene? SHAKESPEARE: Because the disease is not only in the crown. It is in the rooms of the home. GEORGE: Let me paraphrase that in three ways so it lands: Paraphrase #1 (simple): You’re showing us that Denmark’s problems aren’t only political. They’re personal. Paraphrase #2 (blunt):...

Send us Fan Mail The scene begins with the king saying -  Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death  The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe, Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now o...

Send us Fan Mail MASTER SHAKESPEARE: Good even, sir. I come where questions are sharp and nights are sharper. MR. BARTLEY: And the first question is simple: Why begin Hamlet with guards on watch instead of opening with court life, or the prince, or a grand speech? MASTER SHAKESPEARE: Because the world must feel unsafe before you know why. The audience must stand in the dark with common men—those w...

Send us Fan Mail Tonight is Antony— the man who takes grief, wraps it in poetry, and lights Rome on fire. And the terrifying part is that he does it while sounding… respectful. The conspirators imagine a clean reset. They kill Caesar and they expect: the crowd to applaud their courage the republic to breathe again the story to land exactly as they explain it But the moment Caesar’s body hits the g...

Send us Fan Mail The audience sees this manipulation in terms of Cassius’s treatment of Brutus and his use of flattery and reassurance to bring Brutus into the conspiracy to kill Caesar. Later, the audience learns that Cassius is willing to gain money by means that Brutus finds dishonorable and unacceptable, though the specifics are not fully revealed. Cassius is at various times petty, foolish, c...

Send us Fan Mail What we honestly have is ancient testimony, not “medical proof. What the ancient sources actually say Two major biographers written well after Caesar’s death report episodes that sound like seizures: Suetonius (writing ~150 years later) says Caesar was “twice attacked by the falling sickness” during his campaigns, and also mentions fainting fits and nightmares later in life.  Plut...

Send us Fan Mail The Caesar Shakespeare gives us is not a cardboard tyrant. That’s important. If Caesar were obviously monstrous, the play would become an easy sermon: “Kill the tyrant and save the republic.” But Shakespeare refuses the easy version. He makes Caesar impressive, admired, and also irritating. He makes Caesar popular, and also proud. He makes Caesar capable of generosity, and also ca...

Send us Fan Mail Macbeth is not hard. It’s human. Here’s the whole play in one simple truth: Macbeth made Macbeth. Let me say that again: The witches tempt. Lady Macbeth pressures. But Macbeth chooses. They light matches all around him—but Macbeth decides to set the house on fire. This story is not fate winning. This story is choice repeated until it becomes character. HOST: Here is Macbeth in fiv...

Send us Fan Mail Macbeth’s tragedy ends when fear disappears—not because he becomes brave, but because he becomes numb and falsely certain. Now let’s locate ourselves. HOST: We’re in the final stretch. Act 4 Scene 1: Macbeth returns to the witches for more prophecy. Act 5: the kingdom turns, the signs pile up, the “impossible” begins to happen, and Macbeth faces the end. This is the arc: uncertain...

Send us Fan Mail HOST (George): In Macbeth, evil rarely arrives waving a pitchfork; it arrives wearing a suit and offering a reasonable argument that elections are no longer necessary. That’s how it works in public life—and it’s how it works in this play. And Lady Macbeth is the clearest example. Here’s the main idea of this episode. Lady Melania - I mean lady macbeth -doesn’t begin as a monster....

Send us Fan Mail Macbeth does not become evil because he’s confused. He becomes evil because he learns to call evil “reasonable.” Let me repeat that, because that’s the whole episode: He starts using good logic for a bad purpose. That’s how a smart person goes wrong. Shakespeare makes Macbeth understandable on purpose. He shows you the self-talk. We’re picking up right after the witches in Act 1 S...

Send us Fan Mail People call Macbeth a monster. But Shakespeare’s trick is sharper than that: he shows you a man who can still choose—and then shows you the exact moment he starts outsourcing his choices to ambition, marriage, and prophecy. Macbeth—thane, hero, newly honored… and about to discover that wanting something is not the same as deserving it. Now to most of you in the United States, the...

Send us Fan Mail Today I’m taking that same Shakespearean blueprint and placing it in a new world: the 1961 film West Side Story. I’m going to do this in the simplest and clearest way possible: I’m going to tell the film’s story in a straight line. As we go, I’ll point out the matching Shakespeare “parts” — not as trivia, but as the engine that makes both stories run. And one clear rule: no lyrics...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back. Verona is split by a feud. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love, marry in secret, and attempt to outrun a culture trained for violence. Then comes the turning point: Tybalt confronts Romeo, Mercutio fights, Mercutio falls, Romeo kills Tybalt, and Romeo is banished. Juliet faces a forced marriage to Paris. A desperate plan depends on a message. The message f...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back. But first, If you’re joining us now for the first time, here is what you must know. Verona is split by a feud between two houses: Montague and Capulet. Romeo Montague meets Juliet Capulet at a feast, and they fall in love with reckless sincerity. They marry in secret—hoping, perhaps, that love might stitch together what hatred tore. However the city runs on pride and...

Send us Fan Mail JULIET (calm, surprising firmness): They call me a child because I am young. But children don’t usually bury their own futures with their own hands. George (gentle): Then let us speak plainly, Juliet. Not as an emblem. Not as a tragic ornament. But as a mind at work inside a storm. George If you’re joining us now: Verona is split by a feud between Montagues and Capulets. At a Capu...

Send us Fan Mail A large National Council of Teachers of English teacher survey reported by Education Week lists Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet among the most frequently assigned texts in U.S. And Folger Shakespeare Library notes its edition sales (a good “what schools buy” proxy) had Romeo and Juliet first, followed by Hamlet, Macbeth, then A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, and Julius Ca...

Send us Fan Mail Mr. Shakespeare, in our previous episode, you were talking about your life and your literary career.   Could you briefly remark on the uniqueness of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, as well as their importance to literature. Shakespeare Now I could not speak to this assemblage without addressing the subject of my play Hamlet. Many individuals have called it my greatest pla...

Send us Fan Mail You see, by 1582, when I was only eighteen, I married a lady by the name of Anne Hathaway,  Some scholars Believe that my wive's name was actually Agnes. In any case, our first daughter, Susanna, was born the following year. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, followed in 1585.  Unfortunately my dear son Hamnet later died.  And then comes the mystery: the so-called “lost years.” Betwee...

Send us Fan Mail Greetings Mr. Bartley. Let me begin by saying that if you visit the city of Stratford-upon-Avon in England today, the first thing you’ll probably hear is that I was born in 1564. We don’t actually know the exact day, but we do know that I was baptized on April 26th at Holy Trinity Church. Since baptisms usually happened a few days after birth, tradition has settled on April 23rd —...

Send us Fan Mail Now when I started this podcast I knew that I wanted to use a somewhat similar device WHERE I interviewed THE characters in Shakespeare's play - that could be very instructive and lots of fun. But first I wanted to get the relatively tedious stuff out of the way first - starting with rhetorical devices. And then I DELVED into several episodes dealing with the plague in Englan...

Send us Fan Mail Last episode we placed you in the Bishopsgate area by documentary footprints. Now we move a short distance to the engine room: Shoreditch—where purpose-built theatres rose. Two key playhouses defined the neighborhood: The Theatre (built 1576) — built by James Burbage in Shoreditch.  The Curtain (opened 1577) — also in Shoreditch, near Curtain Close.  Both sat outside the City of L...