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:

  • Nothing For the Group blog post by Lauren Halvorsen

  • This in-depth article in American Theatre Magazine

• 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