A Queen's Men Romp!

This episode is a little different from the norm - come with us as we explore the wild world of early modern playing companies! What were they? Why were they? Who were they? And other W words as well. Our look at the Queen’s Men (aka the all-star troupe of actors commanded by Her Majesty) will set us up for the rest of the season, throughout which we will closely examine some of the big headliner titles from the Queen’s Men’s repertory and ask you to VOTE on which one we should feature as a 101 episode at the end of this season. We introduce a new game - The Lost Plays Game! - and also take a few short trips down tangential creeks into the origins of the vacuum cleaner and a memorially reconstructed version of “The Documentary” Shakespeare in Love. It’s a romp. A Queen’s Men romp.

Here’s what we recommended** in this week’s Happy Hour feature:

• Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings

• Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison

• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

• American Royals by Katherine McGee

• Kim F Hall’s 2016 Shakespeare Birth lecture

**The links for the above books are NOT affiliate links, but we did take care to send you to non-Am@z0n booksellers #supportindiebookstores #citescholarsofcolor

Here’s what we featured in our Game/ShakesBubble Gossip segments:

• Lost Plays Database

• The Public’s Richard II radio play now available in a 4-part podcast

• The Donmar Trilogy which will be streaming for free all of October 2020

Cymbeline 201

IN A WORLD full of pandemic podcasts…Whamlet makes our triumphant return with our Season 4 premiere: CYMBELINE 201! We introduce a new feature: Happy Hour; we talk about the evil queen trope and the Cymbeline’s Celtic “roots” in pre-Roman king Cunobelin; we shamelessly self-promote our other current projects and generally revel in reuniting for what is sure to be a killer season. Want to know what’s in store this year? Gotta listen up!

From today’s NEW Happy Hour feature:

• Ayanna Thompson’s Othello presentation that everyone needs to watch IMMEDIATELY.

• You can download the entire issue of Shakespeare Quarterly for FREE and read up on premodern critical race studies!

• Also this super Queer reading of the Twilight series.

From our ShakesBubble Gossip segment:

• Listen to Aubrey play Lady M on The Horned Moon Presents podcast

• Jess will charm your pants off on this episode of A Bit Lit

• Jess gushes about Pericles for the Shakespeare 2020 project

• Wanna hear about The Hudson Strode program? Tune in here on Oct. 14, 2020!

Season 4 Announcement!

Did you miss us? We missed YOU! We return from our LOOOONNGGG summer break with a vengeance on October 5, 2020.

We have so many (good) surprises in store, Season 4 promises to be our best yet.

See you October 5!

Clyomon & Clamydes 101

For our Season 3 grand finale, we would love to introduce you to Clyomon and Clamydes, the bro-nemies that predate all others of this period and whose play is nothing by rhyming fourteeners. We re-meet the contemporary, that prolific Anonymous, “waltz” our way through a summary, and give you a Taste of Text you will never forget. Jess also delivers the other part of her paper about shipwrecks (the first half is in our Pericles episode), we give you a little ShakesBubble Gossip to get you through our extended hiatus, and give you an impromptu review of NTLive’s Frankenstein, too (spoiler alert: we don’t know how we feel about it but we really like that nice Johnny Lee Miller). Friends, this will be our last episode for a while, what with 2020 being slightly insane, so we hope to see you happy and healthy on the other side. Be well!

Bonus: Secret Werewolf

Favorite guest expert and fellow #LadyAcademic Molly Seremet returns to talk to us about why Fletcher and Massinger’s goofy pirate collabo, The Sea Voyage, should be on everyone’s “must” list. We introduce you to the elusive and myste”