Folger Shakespeare Library Blog

“How will this fadge?” asks Viola in Twelfth Night. Or, as she quickly rephrases, “What will become of this?” As we embarked on our pedagogical experiment— four institutions, 39 students, 18 weeks, three professors and one joint trip to the Folger by train, plane, and metro—who knew what would happen? The word “fadge” builds in the possibility of failure: see Oxford English Dictionary, “fadge,” definition 4, “To fit in with or suit the surroundings; hence to get on, succeed, thrive.

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Sir Ian McKellen shared a monologue that some believe Shakespeare may have written. The speech, known as The Strangers’ Case, comes from an Elizabethan play, Sir Thomas More. McKellen sets the scene: It’s all happening 400 years ago. In London, there’s a riot happening. There’s a mob out in the streets and they’re complaining about the the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who’ve arrived there.

The Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics got us thinking about Shakespeare and Italy. Shakespeare's plays are well stocked with merchants of Venice, gentlemen of Verona, and other Italian characters. One-third of his plays are based, or partially based, in Italy. Florence, Milan, Padua, Rome, Sicily, Venice, Verona-these Italian settings play a crucial part in his plots, making them characters in their own right. And it's not just Italian settings-some of Shakespeare's story ideas came from Italian novellas.

Born and raised in Port Talbot-a small Welsh steelworks town-amid war and depression, Sir Anthony Hopkins grew up around men who were tough and eschewed all forms of emotional vulnerability in favor of alcoholism and brutality. A struggling student in school, he was deemed by his peers, his parents, and other adults as a failure with no future ahead of him. But on a fateful Saturday night, the disregarded Welsh boy watched Olivier's 1948 adaptation of Hamlet.

Many of us have repeated the assertion that writing paper in early modern England was expensive and scarce, but it has always bothered me. After hearing this fairly regularly in response to two common questions -"Why did people write on the endleaves of printed books?" and "Why are there no 'Shakespeare manuscripts'?"-I started keeping track of paper prices in account books and bills and receipts to see if this was actually true.

Andrés Gattinoni was awarded a BA and a PhD in History from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and an MA in Sociology of Culture from the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (both in Argentina), where he teaches undergraduate courses at the Department of History. His research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of melancholy.

When the Folger reopens on June 21, we'll have a brand new café in our Great Hall. We will offer grab-and-go breakfast options, coffee, tea, soups and sandwiches, snacks to eat in the garden, and drinks and light dinner fare in the evenings. And while we work on putting the finishing touches on our new dining space, we need your help! The Folger would like to crowdsource the name of our café.

'Tis the season when we turn to familiar tried-and-true tales that bring us, as the song says, comfort and joy. For many, this means the made-for-TV Christmas movie: the frequently cheesy but heartfelt holiday romance that dominates so much programming at this time of year. But hold thy mockery and dismiss these formulaic and ubiquitous romcoms at your peril, for they bear the distinguished and unmistakable quill marks of William Shakespeare. For who loved a trope more than Shakespeare?

Similar to other fruit or plumb cakes of the era, the Woodstreet Cake called for spices such as clove, mace (often conflated with nutmeg as they are sister spices growing on the same tree), and cinnamon. Grated loaf sugar, a widely available form of refined sugar which was boiled and pressed into a conical form, helped to sweeten the cake along with dried fruit, chiefly native-growing currants.

There's a bear, a jealous husband, a pair of young lovers, a miraculous twist.... hmm, what else? How well do you know this Shakespeare play? Can you keep track of the characters? Do you have a sense of the plot? Challenge yourself to take this quiz before you go see Folger Theatre's new production of The Winter's Tale, onstage through December 17. (And then take it again after you see the play!) Want to brush up on your Shakespeare?