On today's episode, how one scholar excavated rich layers of meaning in the family relationships found in the Merchant of Venice.

From the Fulcher Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger Director. Michelle Ephraim teaches Shakespeare

at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. She's the co-author of a cocktail recipe book

called Shakespeare, not stirred, and the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare Podcast,

both with Caroline Bix. In her new memoir, Green World, Ephraim tells the story of how she came to Shakespeare relatively late in her education. Although she didn't grow up with Shakespeare,

Ephraim became transfixed by the Merchant of Venice as a grad student. In particular, she found herself drawn to Jessica,

Shylock's daughter, and the mysteries of their relationship.

That curiosity led Ephraim to discover a novel biblical interpretation of some lines from the play as she researched her dissertation.

In Ephraim's memoir, Merchant refracts through the changing dynamics of her own family as her Holocaust survivor

parents age and she becomes a mother herself. Here's Michelle Ephraim in conversation with Barbara

Bogueve. You came to Shakespeare really late for such a literature and a poetry lover. How did that happen?

Well, that was a secret I kept for a long time and that I sort of came out with it.

But the lateness happened because I avoided Shakespeare. And somehow I just managed to

slip through these cracks or he slipped through these cracks. I'm not really sure, but I went to this progressive high school, which I think maybe omitted some of the basic dead white men from the curriculum. So I was all clear there. And then I was assigned to Shakespeare play in college, and I didn't read it. So it was actually pretty easy

to avoid Shakespeare if you were me. I discovered Shakespeare as a graduate student. I came to grad

school to study the confessional poets. You know, I was really into Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton

and Robert Lowell. And I had this epiphany where I really connected

to Shakespeare and I became emboldened to start reading Shakespeare. And this all happened by

listening to someone recite Shakespeare. Right, that Hamlet. Yes. And you didn't know the plot?

No.

I mean, it feels so freeing to say that.

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