We've done nearly a hundred podcasts since this series began, and nearly all of them dealt with the world and the work of William Shakespeare.

Every once in a while, though, you have to change things up.

And with that in mind, we present to you a story of the one, the only, Richard Shakespeare.

From the Folcher Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Fulcher's Director.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet that you probably didn't even know that there

was a Richard Shakespeare.

If that's true, it's probably because we know far less about him than we do about his much

more famous brother.

William Shakespeare had three brothers, and not much is known about one of them, which

makes Richard Shakespeare, a man near to greatness without ever being great himself, a perfect subject for

historical fiction.

Bernard Cornwell is a writer of historical fiction.

He's best known for the Sharp series, more than 20 books and stories about a character

named Richard Sharp, a rifleman turned officer during the Napoleonic Wars that was made into a TV series in Britain in the 1990s.

Another Cornwell series about the 9th century kingdom of Wessex became the TV show The Last Kingdom.

Now Bernard Cornwell has turned to the world of the Elizabethan theater, and his newest novel,

Fools and Mortals, is a tale of love, intrigue, opulence, and violence, all narrated by John and Mary Shakespeare's

seventh child, Richard. We call this podcast, Masters, Here Are Your Parts.

Bernard Cornwell is interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

I would think that it would be daunting to sit down and say,

right, I'm a historical novelist,

and now I'm going to write a novel featuring William Shakespeare.

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