Shakespeare and Pals: Recapping the Bard

One of Shakespeare’s great… comedies???? Bassanio needs some cash to impress the wealthy heiress Portia. This couldn’t possibly lead to his best friend getting imprisoned and disemboweled. One of Shakespeare's great plays, full of poetry and incident and nuance, and Romance with a capital R. Is it toppled by the antisemitism at its centre? Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments an...

It’s Romeo and Juliet as an anime! What more do you want? It’s Shakespeare’s tale, but not as we know it. Verona is a far future city in the sky, and all the nobles ride pegasi. Years ago, the evil Lord Montague massacred the Capulets – all but one. Juliet survived, and now spends her adolescence cross-dressing as a boy and moonlighting as a masked vigilante. But how will her life change when she...

The one that you forgot Shakespeare did. King John just can’t catch a break. He’s got challengers to the throne, war with France, and now the Pope’s getting on his back. Desperate times call for desperate measures, which include knocking off his young nephew Arthur. Does this play deserve the obscurity it’s fallen into? Sophie and Michael find out! Sources: The Oxford Shakespeare: King John (Oxfor...

Shakespeare stole all his ideas… from the god of Dreams One of the greatest comic book series of all time, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman plays with almost all human culture, so how could Gaiman overlook Shakespeare? In The Sandman #19, Shakespeare plays Midsummer Night’s Dream for an audience of fairies. In The Sandman #75, Shakespeare longs to retire his magic pen just once he’s finished his play abo...

It’s the one with the donkey-headed tradie! An Athenian hero with his Amazon war-bride condemns a young girl to death or nunnery, so young lovers flee into the forest, followed by two other young lovers who don’t love each other yet, so a fairy king tries to fix the love quadrangle, but not before he makes his wife fall for a donkey-man mutant to get revenge on her for not handing over an royal In...

The Walt Disney of Japan took a break from Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Did you know Osamu Tezuka adapted The Merchant of Venice? It’s like if Walt Disney adapted Crime and Punishment… which Osamu Tezuka also did… Tezuka had range!  Does Tezuka’s style capture the folktale darkness of the Merchant of Venice? Tune in to find out! Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments and qu...

Gayer than Shakespeare – Got your attention? Finding queer subtext in renaissance plays usually takes digging. Not here though. Marlowe has his King and boytoy howling sweet nothings to each other. And this is the Christian 1590s – surely these two disaster gays have a happy ending? Gay love, political intrigue, rebellion, far too many characters – can old Kit Marlowe match the quality and convolu...

The Prequel Tetralogy begins! Before the Richard III, before Henry VI, before the War of the Roses, there was unmanly, luxurious Richard II. Under his all-powerful negligence, a squabble between nobles becomes a cause for rebellion against the crown, with Henry Bolingbroke becoming Henry IV! ... spoilers... Sandwiched between Richard III and the Henry plays, has this history play been unfairly ove...

Turns out we’re publishing this one…   We’re going on an unstructured ramble about the most structured poetic form. This month, we’re looking at five Tudor sonnets – and only two of them are Shakespeare!   A sonnet might just be fourteen, but they pack a lot of food for thought into each one. Join us as we discuss:  Thomas Wyatt’s Whoso List to Hunt, I Know Where Is an Hind Philip Sidney’s “Stella...

We really have been trying to make this podcast more family friendly... Here we have an edgy take on Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet’s problem was there families were too far apart. Giovanni and Annabella’s families are too close. They’re the same family. They’re brother and sister. But that’s not all, we’ve also got street fights, dumb nephews, evil Spaniards, and scene-stealing banditti. Is t...

Here’s a hot-take: Romeo and Juliet is a love story. Shakespeare’s tragic love story is so iconic I don’t even need to say anything about it. You’ve Romeo and Juliet with New York gangs and garden gnomes. But join us to see all the details and subtext the updates miss. Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments and questions can be sent to shakespeare.pals@gmail.com Sources: The Oxfor...

You have no idea what this one’s about, do you? Great title though. Would you believe this romantic comedy about four nobles trying to become celibate scholars actually holds up quite well? Would you believe it has some of Shakespeare’s feistiest heroines? Would you believe it has one of his most realistic depictions of causal romance?  Well, you’re just going have to listen to find out. Make sure...

This one gets all the trigger warnings: rape, murder, racism, amputation, cannibalism, questionable anachronisms, and probably a few others I’ve forgotten. Does this draw you in? It certainly scared off centuries of Shakespeare admirers. Some early critics even refused to believe Shakespeare penned this blood bath. Is Titus Andronicus a good riff on the Roman tragedy? Or is it all just a bit much?...

We’re forced to read “Hamlet” at school. Shakespeare was forced to read “Thyestes”.  Family squabbles turning hyperviolent has a long history, nowhere more violent than in these Ancient Roman classics. Do Seneca’s bloody plays still have power to shock? We dig into “Medea” and “Thyestes”. Make sure to subscribe and share this podcast! Comments and questions can be sent to shakespeare.pals@gmail.co...

How does a 400-year-old play feel more old-fashioned than a 2000-year-old one? Shakespeare brings family values, civic virtue, and basic human decency to Plautus’ farce of selfishness and hedonism.   Like West Side Story to Roman and Juliet, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is to Plautus’ The Brothers Menaechmus. The mistaken identities and whirling confusion is the same but the values are not....

You know how you were forced to read Shakespeare in school? Shakespeare was forced to read Plautus. Any Renaissance writer worth his salt riffed on this Roman Republican comedian. Shakespeare liked this play so much he based The Comedy of Errors on it.   It’s a classic tale of long-separated twins getting mistaken for each other.   Has this 2000-year-old comedy aged well? Get ready for mistaken id...

Finally! We’re getting to the masterpieces. If Shakespeare had died before this one, do you think this podcast would exist? No! You wouldn’t even have heard of Shakespeare.   For hundreds of years after release, critics of this play thought it was just too bloody and depraved. Does it still have its power to shock? Join us for a bloody tale of fratricide, seduction, propaganda and some of the best...

When you get to the end of the story, where do you go? The beginning! At the end of Henry VI, Part 3, Henry was dead and Richard III was ascendant. Now Shakespeare gives us a Star Wars-style prequel. One question remains: Is this play as good as the Star Wars prequels? Join us for a war story of derring-do, Joan of Arc, and French villains with all the menace of Team Rocket. Make sure to subscribe...

If the title isn’t content warning enough… CW: sexual assault and suicide Another narrative poem from the master playwright. A tale of the sex scandal that undid the Roman monarchy. And also a ten-page description of a painting…   Yes, the poem is salacious, but Shakespeare isn’t just slapping together a potboiler. Expanding a three page story from Livy’s History of Rome to one-hundred pages, Shak...

The War of the Roses! A pacifist King, a warrior Queen, rebellious lords, and more battles than you can shake a wooden sword at. And like Revenge of the Sith, we see the rise of one of fiction’s most famous baddies – Richard III!   Is this much-ignored war-story worth picking up? Michael, Greg, and Sophie find out.   Sources: The Life of the Author: William Shakespeare, by Anna Beer, from Wiley Bl...

The Avengers Endgame of its day! The bombastic bio-play of the Middle Eastern conqueror Timur. Written by Christopher Marlowe, smoker, spy, and Shakespeare’s best frenemy. After 400 years does this uber-popular, uber-influential hit of the Elizabethan stage still hold up? Michael, Greg and Sophie dig in.   Sources: Christopher Marlowe: The Critical Heritage, ed. Miller MacLure, from Routledge “Chr...

Why are we doing Part 2 before Part 1? Because like George Lucas, Shakespeare got to Part 1 later.   Shakespeare's first and massively successful history play shows us the too, too pious King Henry VI surrounded by Machiavellian politicians, an adulterous wife, a working class rebellion, and the traitorous Duke of York.   Sources The Oxford Shakespeare: King Henry VI, Part 2 (Oxford University Pre...

You up for some epic fantasy that somehow moves faster and slower than The Lord of the Rings? You up for an allegory where Pride is an ogre, Deception is a woman in makeup, and Queen Elizabeth is an elf? Edmund Spenser spins a tale of conflicted knights in a dark world, filled with Soulsborne-esque monsters.   Sources Edmund Spenser, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography by Andrew Hadfield The F...

Please forgive Michael's audio.... Something was wrong with the mic setup   Struggling for cash during a plague, Shakespeare whipped up this risque mythological mini-epic. Venus and Adonis tells the relatable tale of a strapping young man hounded by the Lust God.   How does Shakespeare expand a five page story from Ovid's Metamorphoses into a 100 page poem? Tune in the find out!   Sources The Life...

An excursion away from Shakespeare to the next generation of English drama. Considered one of the greatest dramatists of the English language, John Webster's masterpiece is a dark tragedy about love, prejudice, gender and resilience.   Sources The Works of John Webster Vol 1, edited by David Gunby, David Carnegie, and Antony Hammond (Cambridge University Press)   Comments and questions can be sent...