Myths About Shakespeare

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.8 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2015

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

"It is not so. Thou hast misspoke, misheard. Be well advised; tell o'er thy tale again. It cannot be; thou dost but say 'tis so." —KING JOHN (3.1.5–7) Even if you’re not a Shakespeare scholar, there are things you have learned about Shakespeare and his plays throughout your life – that it’s bad luck to say the name of “the Scottish play” or that Shakespeare hated his wife. Are any of these stories true? And whether they are or not, what do they tell us about previous eras, and our own? Rebecca Sheir talks Shakespeare myths with Emma Smith, professor of English at the University of Oxford—and co-author, with Laurie Maguire, of "30 Great Myths About Shakespeare." From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published April 22, 2015. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. Produced for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. Edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. With help from Nick Moorbath at Evolution Recording Studios in Oxford and Jonathan Cherry at public radio station WAMU.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:05.0	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.
0:08.0	This podcast is called Thou dost but say tis so.
0:13.0	Considering how central William Shakespeare has been to the life and literature of the world,
0:18.0	and considering that he spent most of his career telling stories,
0:22.6	it is really no surprise that so many years after his death, a vast number of myths about Shakespeare
0:28.7	and his work not only exist, but have continued to proliferate.
0:33.7	In this podcast, we're going to try and sort out some of those myths and stories to see which
0:39.2	are true, which are absolutely not true, and which ones have, as Shakespeare might say,
0:45.0	just a scruple of a scruple of truth.
0:48.9	Our guide is co-author of a book titled Thirty Great Myths About Shakespeare, Emma Smith, a professor of English
0:55.7	at Oxford University.
0:57.7	We're not going to tackle all 30 of those myths here.
1:01.4	We'll just be hitting the highlights.
1:03.5	Our interview with Emma is conducted by Rebecca Shear.
1:07.5	My first question for you, why is it we have so many myths about William Shakespeare?
1:13.2	Well, that's a great question. And I think it's partly to do with the fact that everybody cares about Shakespeare in some way, even if they think they don't like the plays or the language is too difficult.
1:23.3	They care in some way about Shakespeare the man. That's why biography is so contentious.
1:28.1	It matters to us.
1:29.1	It matters to us in Britain if it turned out that Shakespeare was more aristocratic than we thought.
1:33.7	Or maybe he was homosexual or did or didn't like his wife.
1:37.4	These things matter and they still make news for us.
	...

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