Every artist needs inspiration.

Every artist.

Even the greatest.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

Finding the sources of Shakespeare's inspiration is something we've done a number of times on this podcast, and it's been surprising

to learn some of the books, folk tales, and ancient stories that came into full flower as the plays

we've all come to love. They seem to offer us a look inside the mind

of Shakespeare, or at the very least a picture of him at work, reading, listening, and learning.

Looking inside Shakespeare's mind is not an unfamiliar pastime for Sir Jonathan Bate.

His 1997 book, The Genius of Shakespeare, exploring Shakespeare's life, including questions

of authorship and autobiography, was called The Best Book about Shakespeare for a Generation

by the Times of London.

Twenty-two years later, he continued that journey with the book we'll

be talking about with him today, How the Classics Made Shakespeare. The book looks at the

classical Greek and Roman authors and stories that populate Shakespeare's work. We caught up

with Sir Jonathan at his home in Tempe, Arizona, where he is professor at Arizona State University.

If his audio quality, or mine for that matter, is something less than what you've come to expect from us,

we hope you'll understand, given the circumstances.

We call this podcast an ancient tale new told.

Jonathan Bate is interviewed by Barbara Bogay.

Now, every Shakespeare fan knows that Shakespeare drew from classical texts and rhetorical techniques, and scholars have explored it.

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