Knight of the Burning Pestle 101
This week we bring you not one but TWO guest experts to tell us why our tepid feelings about Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle are just plain wrong, Emily Lathrop and Sawyer Kemp. Emily and Sawyer jump right in and not only deliver hot takes about Pestle, they also give us the goods in our Happy Hour and Gossip segments, and grace us with their high theatricality in A Taste of Text. Think a play within a play within a play is just too complicated to produce? Think again!
Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:
Dug Days on Disney+
Bitch Magazine’s access series https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/access-issue-intro
Midnight Mass on Netflix
Red re-record
Gender Reveal podcast
Final Fantasy 14
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
Check out the awesome things happening at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in DC (aka Emily’s day job)
Watch out for Sawyer’s upcoming piece in The Shakespeare Bulletin!
Atheist's Tragedy 101
You’re definitely not ready for Cyril Tourneur’s tour de force, The Atheist’s Tragedy: a tragicomedy (?) about the machinations of a dastardly atheist and his terrible family. We bring back all our beloved 101 features for this episode: Meet the Contemporary (spoiler: ol’ Cyril’s kinda boring…); A (sexy and ghoulish) Taste of Text; we summarize the play for you and play a new(ish) game, Lost Plays Roulette. No real gossip this week, not because things weren’t happening but because we weren’t paying attention, but to make up for it we do teach you the difference between a milliner and a haberdasher, so there’s that.
Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:
Follow these Insta accounts: @decolonizemyself and @seedingsovereignty
Check out this fab YA novel: Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
SAA has an Insta account now…yeah, that’s all we got this week
Comedy of Errors 201
It’s been sooooooo long since we did a Comedy of Errors episode we nearly forgot it existed. We’re here to fix that today. Today we’re talking about early performances of the play and the great source text mystery! We also bring back another feature we forgot about for a long time: How 2 Grad School! And instead of choosing the topics for that ourselves, this week we answered the questions of a fan and prospective grad student, Austin. (Good luck, Austin! We’re rooting for you!) Then we gossip a little bit and GTFO. Happy Halloween!
Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:
Happy end-of-October birthdays to Jess and Aubrey!
Read these plays: WHITE by James Ijames and We Are Proud to Present […] by Jackie Sibblies Drury
Get your vote on at Vote.org!
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
Washington Post article about ASC Fall cancellation
Arden of Faversham 201
This week we bring in guest Sheila Coursey, Assistant Professor of English at Saint Louis University who works on late medieval and early modern theater and narratives of crime, to talk to us about how she uses Arden of Faversham to engage students in conversations about contemporary true crime narratives. We rabbit hole (just a little) into which early modern married couples ever get to be alone together on stage (hint: it’s NOT the Ardens), investigate what’s with all the white girls and their tears?, and try to delineate what constitutes a “true crime” or “domestic tragedy” story. It’s not as -ahem- clean cut as you might think (see what we did there?)
Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:
Some Instagram accounts to follow: @notquitebeyonce and @antiracisteducationnow
Vim’s Shakespeare lectures
Maintenance Phase podcast
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
That Amanda Knox documentary we talked about a lot
The Old Wife's Tale 101
SURPRISE! It’s been a hell of a 6-month hiatus and we have sooooooooo much to catch up on (hence the MEGA-EPISODE 2-hour special)! For our Season 5 Premiere, we gathered some brilliant friends to read George Peele’s The Old Wife’s Tale, in full, for your enjoyment. We skipped a few of the usual 101 features to allow time for the reading, but we still bring you the high points of Peele’s life and career in our Meet the Contemporary segment; we also catch you up on the early modern haps that passed by over the summer. Thank you so much to Patrick Harris, Aley O’Mara, Yasmine Hachimi, Sawyer Kemp, Merlyn Sell, Elizabeth Tavares, and Joey Gamble for lending your voices, your laughter, and your smokin’ hot takes to our first episode of the season.
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
Check out the kerfuffle Stanley Wells started on twitter…white dudes gonna white…
RIP Rebecca Munson. <3
Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay 101
The votes are in: The Queen’s Men play the fans wanted for our Season 4 finale is Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay! We Meet the Contemporary, Robert Green, and give you all of the underwhelming details of his life and career; we summarize this very strange play and give you a Taste of Text with the iconic Brazen Head scene; we discuss the many staging challenges presented in the text; our ShakesBubble Gossip segment is hot off the presses! And then it’s time to bid you all adieu (until Season 5, that is). Have a great summer, friends!
Here’s what we recommended in this week’s Happy Hour feature:
Jess is now Dr. Hamlet and Dr. Hamlet loves Becky (her cat). The end.
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
Want to read more about the recent changes at ASC? Go here:
Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare & Race is out now, AND it’s affordable!
Othello 202: American Moor
This is our inaugural 202-style episode, reserved for plays adjacent to or adapted from one of Shakespeare’s, and what better play to start with than Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor! Since it is a “new” play (i.e. one we’ve never discussed before in depth on the pod), we give you some key 101-style features like a dramatis personae, a brief summary, and a taste of text; however, we also assume you’re already familiar with Othello (a source text for Moor) and launch into a deeper discussion of the play the way we would for a standard 201-style episode. Ergo, a “202.” We hope exploring American Moor enhances your understanding of Othello and vice versa. Go add it to your bookshelves now!
Here’s what we recommended in this week’s Happy Hour feature:
The incandescent Nandi Bushell, drumming wonder-child
The Ally Nudge with Akilah Cadet
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
This NPR story about the Romeo and Juliet we all misremember
These 2 reviews about us in the latest Borrowers and Lenders!
Also, for more on American Moor, visit its website!
Edward II 101
This week we’re talking about Marlowe’s Edward II, all about King Edward and his boy toy Gaveston and how trying to have your cake and eat it, too, goes very, very wrong for the ill-fated monarch. We celebrate a queer author for our Happy Hour; we re-introduce you to the very queer Christopher Marlowe in Meet the Contemporary; we read a rather progressive scene (for a 400-something year old play) for our Taste of Text; we cover the rumors and theories about the notorious manner of historical Edward II’s death; and we bring back a favorite game, Line Roulette! This play is gay AF and we LOVE IT.
Here’s what we recommended in this week’s Happy Hour feature:
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon
Those goofy Match.com ads created by Ryan Reynolds and Taylor Swift
Blown Away on Netflix
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
Hudson Strode event on March 26 (link forthcoming)
Catch RaceB4Race Education symposium all four days of speakers and question and answer sessions on YouTube!
The Bard In the Borderlands: Race, Language, and Coloniality event on February 8, 2021
Shakespeare's Sonnets 101
By your powers combined (aka the multiple emails we received requesting this topic), we bring you a 101 episode on Shakespeare’s Sonnets! In our Taste of Text feature, we read you our favorites (57 and 130) and snippets of a few others; Jess gives us a rundown on the difference between Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet style; Aubrey pleads with teacher not to use the sonnets as acting exercises; we summarize the final play in our Keeping Up With the Queen’s Men series; we play another round of the Lost Plays Game; we gossip a little and laugh a lot. Get out there and explore the sonnets!
Here’s what we recommended in this week’s Happy Hour feature:
Looking for a surprisingly easy way to reduce paper and plastic waste in your home? Try Marley’s Monsters’ Unpaper rolls and a bidet attachment. Your butt (and your wallet and the planet) will thank you!
Jess anti-recommends Tiny Pretty Things on Netflix. It’s so bad it’s good…maybe?
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
Check out Brandon Carter’s collection of “sonnet movies” on his instagram: @mistercart3r
A recent dust up and course correction over at The Sundial
Registration for the all-virtual 2021 SAA Conference is now open!
Kim F. Hall-apalooza!
This episode represents a departure from the norm, but hopefully the beginning of a thread of episodes to feature one major scholar and their contributions to the field of Shakespeare studies. Who better to start with than Dr. Kim F. Hall? Dr. Hall’s prolific body of work has impacted the field (and many other fields of study) in so many ways that we just had to devote an entire episode to her. We also deliver expected features such as Happy Hour and ShakesBubble Gossip, so stick around for those as well. We hope we pique your interest in Dr. Hall’s work and find ways to incorporate it into your own!
Here’s what we recommended in this week’s Happy Hour feature:
Maintenance Phase podcast with Aubrey Gordon (aka Your Fat Friend) and Michael Hobbes (aka co-host of You’re Wrong About)
Jess says treat yo’self to a hot water bottle
Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:
Baltimore Shakespeare Factory bids farewell to their artistic director, Tom Delise (Facebook announcement on 1.5.21)
NYT article eulogizing the lost work of our friends over at Brave Spirits Theatre