Something Shakespeare This Way Comes

Most likely to rope their brother into recording a ridiculous podcast episode about Shakespeare? That goes to me! I thought it would be fun to run through a list of the superlatives you find in a high school yearbook and award them to various characters in Shakespeare. You know, best couple, mostly likely to succeed, all that fun stuff. Also, apologies to anyone whose high schools were way too int...

Farewell to 2025 – may you meet your fitting end at midnight (drowning in a cask of wine, perhaps). The past couple years have seen an absolute boom in Hamlet adaptations and productions. Why is Hamlet so hot right now? In this episode, I tackle the sheer number of Hamlet productions on the scene and how those adaptations wrestle with Shakespeare’s original work and what that says about the times...

Are we so back??? I hope so! Thank you to everyone who has patiently waited while I've been working through personal stuff. And congrats to everyone who caught up on the podcast during the break. I am back with an episode near and dear to my heart about whether Shakespeare was, in fact, a bisexual icon. Okay, not entirely. In this episode I talk about the long history of questions surrounding...

Has the shrew been tamed or was the taming just the friendswe made along the way? I am back with the third and final episode looking at TheTaming of the Shrew ! And, phew, it’s been quite a ride. In this episode, I’ll be discussing contemporary reactionsto The Taming of the Shrew , performances of the play across time, and my final take on the play now that I’ve finished reading way too much about...

Hello boys, I’m back! The long-awaited 10 Things I Hate About You episode is here. Please enjoy listening to me and my brother probably defend this movie too hard. Honestly, for being a late ‘90s romcom, it’s doing a pretty good job of being a Shakespeare adaptation. And has the added advantage of being put against a Shakespeare play that is…more problematic than many of his other comedies. While...

It’s that time of year again to look back at what happened on the Ides of March many years ago and consider how badly the conspirators fumbled the ball. While I will be celebrating March 15 my favorite way, by posting jokes on social media, I wanted to take the time to collect some general thoughts about the assassination of Julius Caesar and the relevance of Shakespeare’s play. When I covered it...

This episode is a true example of what happens when you don't make yourself stop falling down the research rabbit hole. We're back with more The Taming of the Shrew and looking specifically the two main romantic leads. What is Petruchio's deal? What is Kate's? And why is everyone so obsessed with them? I wade my way through a reading of the play, several books, and a number of arti...

Our long-awaited Shrew series has begun! And I have discovered that I committed myself to doing three episodes surrounding a play that maybe I don’t like? But regardless of whether I’m going to banish Petruchio to my rejected list, there are still interesting things to talk about concerning The Taming of the Shrew , because of course there are! It’s Shakespeare. There’s always something to talk ab...

The Academy recently announced its Best Picture nominees,and while there’s been plenty of discussion over how good those nominees are, not even enough people are discussing how Shakespeare these movies are. I’m here to the change that by starting with the only nominee I’ve seen so far: Conclave . How Shakespeare is this movie about electing the pope? Well, seems like it has the potential to be pre...

This episode is brought to you by the newsletters about books that I subscribe to and my ability to sometimes overthink things. This time around we are talking books! First-person perspective! Theater! Soliloquy! Do you find it true that in the modern books you read, there’s more action than introspection and thought? Do books seem to be cinematic, already poised perfectly for an adaptation to the...

How often have you seen a quote on a beautifully colored background with the claim that the words are from William Shakespeare himself? If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, then probably at least a handful of times. But there are pitfalls when it comes to taking what seems to be good advice from Shakespeare himself. One of them being that most of what was written by Shakespeare are...

Do you consider something to be a Shakespeare adaptation if it features a female protagonist who dresses up as a boy? Is this basic concept now considered quintessentially Shakespearean? Or does there need to be an added je ne sais quoi to make it count? That is the central question concerning the 1985 teen comedy Just One of the Guys , which the internet claims is loosely based on Twelfth Night ....

It has come to my attention that I recently uploaded this with the wrong audio attached. Cool! It's about T.S. Eliot now, I promise. This episode we are discussing my man T.S. Eliot, who wrote era defining poetry but also penned probably the most famous one-star review of the Hamlet that exists. What was his problem with Hamlet (the play) and Hamlet (the character), exactly? We’ll be looking at th...

Happy long weekend surprise episode drop! We are having fun this time with various tales of Shakespeare lore that I've stumbled across in my reading over the last year of doing the show but haven't included because most of these stories have been judged to be dubious in some way. But just because something isn't true doesn't mean it isn't also a fun story or bit of gossip. And honestly who isn't i...

We’re back with more Ben Jonson! This episode we consider Jonson’s works, his plays for public and private theater, his poetry, and his relationship with the court. When it comes to how he conducted his career, was also look at the how he differed from Shakespeare. Not as a point of judgement, but just to give us a more complete picture about what men did with their writing and how this (ironicall...

Hi, everyone! Things got a little away from me this week, what with a national election demanding all my attention and energy, so I'm bringing back an old episode. In this episode, I talk about the Shakespeare we had to read in high school, what those plays were, and some thoughts about why that is. Whether you loved or hated the Shakespeare unit in high school, you probably had to suffer through...

Welcome back, gentle listeners, to season 2 and the long-awaited discussion of Ben Jonson! Shakespeare’s colleague, friend, maybe sometimes frenemy, it’s up to us to decide. But definitely someone who knew him and admired (perhaps somewhat begrudgingly) his work. After diving into the world of biography and various survey and companion type books, I now have a more complete picture of Ben Jonson t...

What’s it like to go to the theater to see Shakespeare but then see a play about his works instead of seeing one of his works? Pretty rad, actually! In this episode, I’m covering The Book of Will , a play by Lauren Gunderson about the efforts behind the printing of the First Folio. The First Folio is one of the most revered books in the English language and often has this air of grandeur about it...

Are you interested in an early 90s indie film that has some Shakespearean elements and has also become a queer cult classic? Let’s all just assume the answer is yes here. In this episode, I revisit the 1991 film My Own Private Idaho , which some people claim is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, and that’s true…ish. If you decide to watch because of the Shakespearean elements, the...

Ghostlight is an indie film that at first blush seems to be dealing with some pretty well-worn tropes: we have a family dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic event and has the lead character develops his emotional intelligence through the power of theater. Sound like a bunch of other movies? It does, but this film is a testament to the fact that if you do a familiar trope well, the result can...

Welcome to the end of season 1 and our year in review! In this episode, I reflect a little on the year I just had, how I got the podcast started and chose a title, the topics I’ve covered, any new opinions or insight I have and a look into my most (and least) popular episodes. We close out with some pretty awesome questions asked by all of you! Just stumbled across this episode and didn’t get a ch...

Another episode, another silly movie about Shakespeare. This time, I forced my brother to watch Anonymous , the 2011 Roland Emmerich film that puts forth the hypothesis that Edward de Vere was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. Whatever you think about the authorship question and the validity of the Oxfordian theory of authorship, can we all agree that this movie is not very good nor very con...

We are back and this week we are talking Shakespeare adaptation! What are the different types of adaptation, what do they accomplish, and what makes some stand out from the rest? We’re talking movies, books, and plays in this episode, featuring a collection of Shakespeare content I’ve been consuming as I try to think through what makes something stand out and what makes something merely meh. On th...

Spoiler alert for this week’s episode: Judi Dench is super cool and also has a ton of interesting stuff to say about Shakespeare. This episode we’re talking Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent , a collection of conversations about Shakespeare’s plays and character between Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea, a longtime actor and director who has a history of working with Dench. Even if you are not the...

Would you classify yourself as a straight up astrology nerd or someone who barely knows your sign and that’s where you’d like to leave it? What about when it comes to Shakespeare? In the spirit of having fun, in this episode I talk to repeat guest Gabbi Miller about which astrological signs different Shakespeare characters would be. I come supplying the knowledge about Shakespeare, she comes with...