How Queer Was Shakespeare?

Darren and Rachel ask What are Shakespeare's Foulest Murders?Book recommendations Kathryn Harkup, Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020).Vanessa McMahon, Murder in Shakespeare's England (A&C Black, 2006).Emma Whipday, Shakespeare's Domestic Tragedies: Violence in the early modern home (Cambridge University Press, 2019).Randall Martin, Women, Murder, and Equity in Early Modern England (Routledge, 2007).Brian Vickers, ‘Kyd’s Authorship of King Leir’, Studies in Philology, 115.3 (2018), 433-71.The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd, General Editor Brian Vickers, Associate Editor Darren Freebury-Jones, 2 vols (Suffolk: S. Brewer, 2024-6).Emsley, John. The Elements of Murder. Oxford University Press, 2005.Herman, Eleanor. The Royal Art of Poison : Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicines, and Murder Most Foul. Duckworth, 2019.Parascandola, John. King of Poisons: A History of Arsenic. Potomac Books, Inc., 2012.

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.

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! - RachelBook 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, 2022https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Dramaturgical-Shakespearean-Encyclopedias-Handbooks/dp/B0BT2DZGTK/Aanstad, Rachel. A Midsummer Night's Dream Illustrated Handbook and Encyclopedia, 2021https://www.amazon.com/Midsummer-Nights-Illustrated-Handbook-Encyclopedia/dp/B09PKSTL1S/ref=sr_1_2

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.

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

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   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

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)

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?

Darren and Rachel discuss Shakespeare's Villains

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