A King and No King 101

CW: Today’s episode involves one of our classic tangents, this time into the topic of incest and incest porn.

That said, today’s episode is a 101 all about dynamic playwriting duo Beaumont and Fletcher’s “tragicomedy” A King and No King. We summarize this bonkers play for you - spoilers: it’s only a fake incest plot to lure you in - and ready a portion of act 3 for a Taste of Text. We talk a little about why incest tropes are so popular in modern media, particularly in pornography but also in early modern drama, we gossip a little about the still-unraveling Cleveland Playhouse debacle, and call it a day. Also, there’s a minor character in the play whose name sounds like BI-CURIOUS, so start the fan fictions engines NOW.

Here’s what we featured in our Happy Hour segment:

• Aubrey’s rec: Ancient History FanGirl podcast

• Jess’s rec: Louise Erdrich, The Future Home of the Living God  and Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

Here’s what we talked about in our ShakesBubble Gossip segment:

• Cleveland Playhouse debacle

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

• Spencer

• 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!

Maid's Tragedy 101

This episode is all about the AMAZING Beau-Fletch collabo The Maid’s Tragedy! We love this play sooooo much, so we start by Meeting the Contemporaries and tell you all about Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s epic, early modern bro-mance; we give you a Taste of Text (and a great “your mom” joke); Aubrey plays a round of Line Roulette; and we have soooooo much to cover in our ShakesBubble Gossip that it needed its own list of links (see below). Enjoy the episode and all the kinky twists of The Maid’s Tragedy!

1. This week’s SHAKES-BUBBLE “GOSSIP”: 

   1. Cool post on Burbage

   2. Also some cool shit happening at OSF

   3. This nonsense from The Telegraph

   4. This adaptation of Macbeth down under

   5. Watch the speakers from the recent RaceB4Race Symposium