Shakespeare and Pals: Recapping the Bard

Othello learns he should trust his wife more than his mustache-twirling sidekick. Othello is a black Venetian war hero, loved by everyone... Everyone except his new wife's father... and ensign Iago. To get back at Othello for passing him over for promotion, Iago will poison Othello's mind. He will make Othello think his new wife is cheating on him. Tragedy ensues. Join Michael and Sophie to discus...

A 19th Century Norwegian naturalistic social drama... It's much more exciting than it sounds. Nora and Torvald seem to have the perfect middle-class marriage, but one Christmas a secret from Nora's past comes back to haunt her. Years ago, for her husband's sake, she committed a little crime. Now she's being blackmailed. In 24 hours, can Nora make this whole thing go away? Join Michael and Sophie t...

What price would you pay for your brother's life? Your life? Your body? The Duke's left town, leaving the puritanical Angelo in charge. Suddenly, pre-marital intercourse will get you the death penalty. After a night with his girl, Claudio gets locked up, and he begs his sister Isabella to beg Angelo for mercy. Angelo says he will let Claudio go... if she gives Angelo her body! What will she do? Ho...

Shakespeare needed to steal his stories from somewhere. We just did All's Well That Ends Well, but did you know Shakespeare nicked the plot from Boccaccio's Decameron? The Decameron is foundational work of Italian and Renaissance literature. A set of short stories by turns savage, funny, and bawdy. But it's not just men writing short stories in the Renaissance. Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, gave i...

Helena loves Count Bertram, but fears he'll never love a commoner. She's right.  We're in the Kingdom of France, and the King is dying of disease. None of his doctors can help, but Helena's dead doctor dad left her a special medicinal formula. In exchange for saving the King's life, the King will let her choose any man she likes for a husband. She chooses her childhood friend Count Bertram. Rather...

Shakespeare's the boss of English literature. Homer's the boss of Western literature! After the Trojan War, lying Odysseus is running a bit late to return home. But he has a good excuse! Gods and goddesses are getting in his way, throwing cyclopses, sea monsters, comely sorceresses at him. Is the foundational text of Western literature a ripping yarn? Join Michael and Sophie to find out! Make sure...

It's the Trojan War! And young love is in the air. Shakespeare loves him a classical reference, so here's his love story set in the Trojan War. The Trojan nobles Troilus and Cressida love each other, and they manage to tie the knot. Unfortunately, Cressida's father defected to the Greek side, and he has Cressida brought to the Greek camp with him. Can Troilus and Cressida's love survive this?  Is...

A bawdy sex farce Restoration style... by a woman! Virginia Woolf said that, "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." Does that raise your expectations a little too high for this sex comedy? Probably. But anyway Aphra Behn gives us a fast-paced story of an Italian noblewoman who does not want to marry...

Do Italians do it (Shakespeare) better?  Giuseppe Verdi strips Shakespeare's bawdy farce down to basics, cutting characters, plots, scenes. And he makes the play... better?  Join us to discuss Giuseppe Verdi's opera version of Shakespeare! Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments and questions can be sent to shakespeare.pals@gmail.com

Shakespeare's break out side-character Falstaff gets his own play! It worked so well for Jack Sparrow... Falstaff returns to the stage. There are no wars or princes this time, only love, swindling, and funny accents. Falstaff needs money, so he's going to woo and hoodwink two married ladies. But these merry wives are more cunning that Falstaff expects. Can Shakespeare's rotund philosopher-scoundre...

What if Hamlet but girl... and silent movie? Everything you know about Hamlet is a lie. Actually, Hamlet is a "she". She still needs to kill her uncle though. Asta Nielsen's reinvention of Hamlet may lack some of the depth of the original,  but, hey, she gives us a Hamlet college life AU. Does this 100 year old move stand the test of time? Join us to find out! Make sure to subscribe and share this...

Danish guy wants to... This doesn't need an introduction! After many long years, we're here. Shakespeare's masterpiece, the masterpiece of English literature. As Gustave Flaubert said, the three finest things God ever made were Hamlet, Don Giovanni, and the sea. Does Hamlet deserve the hype? Join us to find out! Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments and questions can be sent to s...

Revenge is a dish best served... with lots of collateral damage... Andrea's dead, but true haters take revenge from beyond the grave. He enlists the spirit of Revenge to kill his murderer, the Portuguese Prince Balthazar. This leads to Andrea's girlfriend falling in love with another man, that man getting murdered, that man's father murdering the murderers, and... so much other stuff... The origin...

We return to Shakespeare's true love: cross-dressers. When Viola gets washed up on the Illyrian coast, she simply has no choice but to dress up as a boy and enter the service of the sexy local lord... Hi-jinks ensue. This good, cross-dressing girl gets caught up in love triangles and mistaken identity. We once more ask: Is Shakespeare good at comedy? Join us to find out! Make sure to subscribe and...

Phedre's been bit by the love-bug, and it's gonna get a lot of people killed. Athenian Prince Hippolyte thinks the worst thing is for his step-mum Phedre to hate him... Oh, no, no... His step-mum L-O-V-E-S him. She knows it's wrong, but her husband is probably dead, and her maid is an enabler. What could possibly go wrong? We've done the greatest French comedy, Moliere's Tartuffe. Now we're doing...

Boy loves girl. Boy gets banished, then girl gets banished, so boy and girl run to the forest where girl's father is also banished. And girl pretends to be boy to flirt with boy. That old chestnut... Shakespeare loves his cross-dressing heroines, and here we have one of his most famous -- Rosalind. We also get the first of Shakespeare's wise fools.   But is "As You Like It" as we like it? Join Mic...

This time the Shakespeare-thing is... Us! Three years on, we've decided to take a look back at the podcast. How our opinions of Shakespeare have changed, our hot takes, our cold takes, and what is the weirdest Shakespeare thing we've done is? Join us for our three-year retrospective! Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments and questions can be sent to shakespeare.pals@gmail.com  

The big question: Are the French funny? It wasn't just England that had Renaissance theatre. France had a crack at it, too, and their big-dog of classical comedy was Molière. Orgon's wife and children hate Tartuffe, a mooching, puritanical, hypocritical conman. Unfortunately, Orgon thinks Tartuffe is a saint. Can Orgon family, with the help of a feisty maid, catch Tartuffe red-handed? Has Molière'...

The one where Brutus gets radicalised by anonymous commenters Conspiracy, assassination, sky-rending omens. Julius Caesar is dictator-for-life, and some people think this might be bad for democracy. But is it right to kill him? And then the second half of the play is about a war that no one remembers. Does Julius Caesar deserve its place among Shakespeare's A-list? Join Michael and Sophie to find...

We're traveling back in time to the inspiration for Shakespeare's Roman plays - Plutarch! Plutarch wrote compact, anecdote-filled, politically-astute biographies of the great Greeks and Romans, and who greater than Julius Caesar? Would Plutarch's tale of the rise and fall of Julius Caesar be worth reading even if Shakespeare never based his Julius Caesar on it? Join us to find out! Make sure to su...

We're having a second chance at a first impression. Shakespeare's first play -- AGAIN! Just like Shakespeare got better, so have we. Sophie and Michael go back to Shakespeare's very first play. Does Shakespeare's debut -- packed with love triangles, cross-dressing, and love-able rogues, and hate-able heroes -- benefit from a new light? Tune in to our new episode 1 and episode 36. Make sure to subs...

Is Henry V great? Or propaganda? It's great propaganda! In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare invented the modern romantic comedy. Now he invents the modern war film. Henry V fights the valiant, villainous French with a country-crossing army of ethnically diverse warriors (English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh).  Does this patriotic crowd-pleaser still work in our more cynical times? Is it patriotic...

Bringing back the explicit tag for this one! The ladies of Ancient Greece are fed up with the war. Well, you know what men love more than killing each other? Sex! Greek citizenesses are going on a sex-strike till the peace. Comedy ages notoriously badly, but is Aristophanes' edgy, bawdy, snappy satire still a hit? Join us to find out! Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments and que...

Believe Your Girlfriend: The Play Benedict likes Beatrice, and Beatrice likes Benedict, but Benedict and Beatrice don't like that they like each other, so their friends trick them into getting together. Meanwhile, Claudio likes Hero, and Hero likes Claudio, but Don John doesn't like people being happy, so he tricks Claudio into thinking Hero is cheating on him. Claudio... does not take it well. "R...

Gay Henry IV! Except not really... Except very much yes! Gus Van Sant's classic of queer cinema recontextualises Henry IV into the world of gay hustlers. Prince Hal is a trust fund kid slumming it, and Poins is our narcoleptic viewpoint character. With lines directly adapted from Henry IV, and sequences remixed from Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight, Gus Van Sant rams Henry IV into modern day. Does...