Shakespeare and Friends

About Shakespeare and Friends

Darren Freebury-Jones and Rachel Aanstad discuss the big questions about Shakespeare's work

Publisher

Rachel Aanstad and Darren Freebury-Jones

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Jan 2026

Latest episode

27 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

11 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 Sept 2026

   What role do the gods play in Shakespeare?

   Darren and Rachel discuss the role of Greco-Roman Pagan deities in Shakespeare and Early Modern TheatreDustin W. Dixon and John S. Garrison, Performing Gods in Classical Antiquity and the Age of Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).Daniel Blank, Shakespeare and University Drama in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). Emanuel Stelzer, ‘Questions of Mediation of the Deus ex Machina in Elizabethan Drama’, Skenè (2024), 263-92.Martin Higgins, ‘“Flowers of this purple dye, / Hit with Cupid’s archery”: Lyly, Shakespeare, and Early Modern Cupid’, in Critical Insights: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by Nicolas Tredell (New York: Salem Press, 2020), pp. 118-34.Joscelyn Godwin. (2005). The pagan dream of the Renaissance. Weiser Books.Bate, Jonathan. How The Classics Made Shakespeare. Princeton University Pres, 2020.Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Malden, Mass. Blackwell, 2012.Stagman, Myron. Shakespeare’s Greek Drama Secret. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.

2. 

   30 Jul 2026

   How Queer Was Shakespeare?

   Darren Freebury-Jones and Rachel Aanstad ask "How queer was Shakespeare?" I'm not sure what happened to my mic. It's not unbearable but it wasn't as good as usual. Sorry! - Rachel Book Recommendations Will Tosh, Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare (London: Sceptre, 2024). Fabio Ciambella, Cristiano Ragni, and Camilla Caporicci (eds), Richard Barnfield's Poetics: Early Modern English Poetry Beyond Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2025). Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson (eds), All the Sonnets of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). MacDonald P. Jackson, ‘Dating Shakespeare's Sonnets: Some Old Evidence Revisited’, Notes and Queries, 49.2 (2002), 237-41. Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Andy Kesson, John Lyly and Early Modern Authorship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).Darren Freebury-Jones, Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival (London: Routledge, 2022). https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Robert-Routledge-Studies-Shakespeare/dp/1032154098/ Darren Freebury-Jones, Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers: How Early Modern Playwrights Shaped the World’s Greatest Writer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024). https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-borrowed-feathers-playwrights-greatest/dp/152617734X/ Bray, Alan. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. London: Gay Men’s Press, 1982. Levine, Laura. Men in Women’s Clothing. CUP Archive, 1994. Smith, Bruce R. Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England : A Cultural Poetics : With a New Preface. Chicago And London: University Of Chicago Press, 1994. Vanhoutte, Jacqueline. Age in Love. U of Nebraska Press, 2019. Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare, Sex, and Love. OUP Oxford, 2010. Aanstad, Rachel. A Bawdy Twelfth Night or What You Will Encyclopedia & Dramaturgical Handbook, 2022 https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Dramaturgical-Shakespearean-Encyclopedias-Handbooks/dp/B0BT2DZGTK/ Aanstad, Rachel. A Midsummer Night's Dream Illustrated Handbook and Encyclopedia, 2021 https://www.amazon.com/Midsummer-Nights-Illustrated-Handbook-Encyclopedia/dp/B09PKSTL1S/ref=sr_1_2

3. 

   29 Jul 2026

   What Makes a Monster in Shakespeare?

   Darren and Rachel talk about the history of monsters and what makes a monster in ShakespeareJeffrey J. Cohen, ed. Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). David Suchet, ‘Caliban’, in Players of Shakespeare, edited by Philip Brockbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 167-79.Jeffrey Kahan ‘Ambroise Paré’s Des Monstres as a Possible Source for Caliban’, Early Modern Literary Studies, 3.1 (1997), 4.1-11. Stowell, Louis: The OdysseyGilmore, David D. Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.Bates, A. W. Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed Births in Early Modern Europe. Rodopi, 2005.Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. Zone Books, 1998.

4. 

   30 May 2026

   Did Shakespeare Travel?

   Darren and Rachel discuss whether or not Shakespeare understood geography and how likely was it that he traveled. Plays discussed include Midsummer Night's Dream, A Winter's Tale, As you like it, Tempest, Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet.Darren's recommendationsMap of Early Modern London https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ELEP1.htmShakespeare and the Mediterranean, edited by Tom Clayton, Susan Brock, and Vicente Forés (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2004).Paul Brown,  ‘“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”: The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism’, in Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 48-71.Rachel's recommendationsBrotton, Jerry. This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World. Published in the US as The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam. Viking, 2016.Dustagheer, Sarah. Shakespeare and London: A Dictionary. The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.Klapště, Jan. The Czech Lands in Medieval Transformation. Translated by [translator name if known], East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, vol. 17, Brill, 2012.Lockhart, Paul Douglas. Denmark, 1513–1660: The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy. Oxford UP, 2007.Aanstad, Rachel The Influences Behind Shakespeare's Plays Forthcoming Pen and Sword 2027

5. 

   25 Apr 2026

   Was Shakespeare a Royalist?

   Darren and Rachel discuss whether or not Shakespeare was pro or anti-monarchy.Darren's reading recommendationsBogdanov, Michael. 'Shakespeare the Director’s Cut: Essays on the Tragedies, Comedies and Histories.' Edinburgh: Capercaillie Books, 2013.Figgis, John Neville. 'The Divine Right of Kings', 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914.Freebury-Jones, Darren. “Michael Bogdanov’s Iconoclastic Approach to Political Shakespeare,” New Theatre Quarterly, 35.2 (2019), 99-111.Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V.” In Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985, pp. 18-47.Norwich, John Julius. 'Shakespeare’s Kings'. London: Faber & Faber, 2018.Tillyard, E. M. W. 'Shakespeare’s History Plays'. London: Chatto & Windus, 1944.Rachel's RecommendationsThe Holinshed Project https://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/Holinshed/Shakespeare and Politics    / @shakespearefcg   (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiopo73uhXPiA3yJV_rg72Q) The book that Rachel mentioned that perpetuated the idea that actors did not rehearse is called 'Secrets of Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach' by Patrick Tucker

6. 

   29 Mar 2026

   Did Shakespeare and His Audiences Believe in Fairies?

   Darren Freebury-Jones and Rachel Aanstad discuss fairies, witches and the goddess Hecate. What was their history and how did they change because of Shakespeare?Just a heads up when I refer to Puck as a "republican-democrat" I mean as opposed to a royalist not as a member of US political parties.- RDarren's upcoming eventsShakespeare and Kingshiphttps://1620shouse.org.uk/events/shakespea...Susan Dwyer Amussen and Darren Freebury-Jones on Shakespearehttps://www.fane.co.uk/susan-darrenRecommended ReadingMary Ellen Lamb, ‘Taken by the Fairies: Fairy Practices and the Production of Popular Culture in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 51.3 (2000), 277-312.Diane Purkiss, At The Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things (New York: New York University Press, 2000).Marjorie Swann, ‘The Politics of Fairylore in Early Modern English Literature’, Renaissance Quarterly, 43.2 (2000), 449-73.Ronald Hutton, ‘The Making of the Early Modern British Fairy Tradition’, The Historical Journal, 57.4 (2014), 1135-56.Darren Oldridge, ‘Fairies and the Devil in Early Modern England’, The Seventeenth Century, 31.1 (2016), 1-15.Francis Young, Fairies: A History (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2026).Gary Taylor and Rory Loughnane, ‘The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare’s Works’, in The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 417-603.David Fuller, ‘The Fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, for Between Worlds: Folklore and Fairy Tales (2017), available at https://betweenworldsdurham.wordpress.com/...The Elizabethan Fairies: The fairies of Folklore and The Fairies of Shakespeare, By Minor White Latham, Columbia University Press 1919British Goblins by W. Sikes (1879)Folk-Lore of Shakespeare by Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer (1883)The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald T. Scot (1584)Huon of Bordeaux 13th century French poem interpreted by Lord Berners (1466-7)

7. 

   25 Mar 2026

   Could Shakespeare Have Written His Plays?

   What did Shakespeare know and when did he know it? How much did he collaborate with other playwrights? How do we know he ever existed at all?

8. 

   25 Mar 2026

   Who is the Baddest of Them All? Shakespeare's Villains

   Darren and Rachel discuss Shakespeare's Villains

9. 

   26 Jan 2026

   Is it better to be a witty fool?

   Darren and Rachel talk about fools, clowns and why farting paid. Includes discussion of Hamlet, Falstaff, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Twelfth Night.

10. 

    18 Jan 2026

    What was on Shakespeare's Menu?

    Rachel and Darren discuss the meanings of food in Shakespeare's plays. Topis discussed include black pepper, aphrodisiacs, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet and Falstaff

11. 

    18 Jan 2026

    Did Shakespeare's Audiences Believe in Ghosts?

    Rachel and Darren talk about how belief in ghosts changed during the reformation and what Shakespeare and his audiences would have thought. Plays discussed include Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Hamlet

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

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