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

Yorkshire Tragedy 101

It’s our ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE EXTRAVAGANZAAAAAAA!!! To celebrate, we brought in new and returning friends of the pod, Charlie Bell, Courtney Parker, Molly Seremet, Patrick Harris, and Sawyer Kemp to read Thomas Middleton’s Yorkshire Tragedy in its entirety, purely for your listening pleasure. This week, you get your Summary, Taste of Text, and Tips and Tidbits all rolled into one ridiculous bout of reader’s theatre, with a healthy dose of murder on top. We wouldn’t want to celebrate the Big 100 any other way.

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

• the @adventcarolndar instagram account: 60-second 2020 carols, one a day till Dec. 25, by @joelwaggoner and @juliamet

• For a “Swiftie” kick: the Evermore album and Long Pond studio sessions

• @sotherans on Twitter

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

• ShaxBull’s new advisory board: Farah Karim-Cooper, David Sterling Brown, Lauren Eriks Cline, Vanessa Corredera, Sawyer Kemp, Nora Williams, and Sandra Young.

• Ruben Espinosa’s new book!

• Hailey Bachrach’s newsletter - Dramatis Personae

• Nothing for the Group newsletter/roundup by dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen

Insatiate Countess 101

So there’s this Countess, and she’s horny AF…and thus begins John Marston’s The Insatiate Countess. We dish a little happy with some signal boosts in our Happy Hour segment; we tell you everything we know about John Marston and the other writers who had a hand in this text in our Meet the Contemporary feature; our Taste of Text is extra tasty because the titular Countess is, in fact, thirsty like whoa; we give you yet another title to ponder while Keeping Up With the Queen’s Men; we gossip a bit and GTFO. Watch out for that Countess’ “dark hole” is all we’re saying.

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

• All My Relations podcast

• Ijeoma Oluo’s new book: MEDIOCRE

• They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

• @soyouwanttotalkabout on Instagram

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

• Red Bull Theatre’s live reading of A King and No King on Dec. 14, 2020

• Listen to some brilliant teens stage their favorite scenes from Shakespeare as radio plays on the Dr. Ralph Presents podcast