From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

This podcast is called Here is a Play Fitted.

That line from a Midsummer Night's Dream was the title of a 2013 Folger exhibition.

It looked at the impact of set and costume designers on performances

of Shakespeare's plays, from his time, to the extent that we know about it, to our own.

The exhibition explored how the strikingly different choices of these artists affected

the audience's imaginations, and interestingly, what those choices tell us about the times in which the plays were performed.

The curator of that exhibition is the guest on this podcast, Denise Whalen, an associate professor in the Department of Drama at Basser College.

She is interviewed by Steve Martin.

So, Denise, when most people are watching a Shakespeare play, they're probably assuming they're seeing an authentic presentation of Shakespeare's work.

But one of the things you pointed out in the exhibition you curated at the Folger was that every presentation of Shakespeare is made a bit different by the theater professionals who are staging

that performance. Would you talk about how that happens? Well, in part, it's that theater professionals

want to present the play to the audience that they're given. And so depending on who the audience is,

that the production is being presented to, The play can change drastically, and certainly

historically, our sense of what is dramatically good or bad or right or wrong changes with time.

Is it correct that the stage in Shakespeare's Day was mostly bare except for a few props,

such as a throne, a bed, etc?

All the evidence that we have suggests that there was nothing like a contemporary set.

What we know about Shakespeare's stage is that it was a bear stage.

There's some evidence from a, there's a wonderful guy.

He owned the Rose Playhouse, Philip Henslow.

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