Shakespeare told stories with poetry.

So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile.

We lose it not so long as we can smile.

Puccini and Rossini told stories that way too.

And so to this week's guests.

I never knew my pops, moms was a junkie, raised in the streets with the beats that are funky, concrete and metal, a child of the ghetto,

looking for the loop but there was none for Rethello. I walked by people smoking dumb rocks, I need a slain grass, or you got it with a shot, shot. From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

This podcast is called Something Then in Rhyme. Since 2002, something then in rhyme.

Since 2002, Gregory and Jeffrey Amin Kiyum, better known as GQ and JAQ, the Q Brothers, have been using hip-hop to adapt and update the plays of William Shakespeare.

Their first show, The Bommity of Errors, ran for months

off Broadway. They followed that with Funk It Up About Nothing for Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Q. Jens with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Rome Sweet Rome at the University of Iowa,

and I Heart Juliet at Connecticut College.

At the time we recorded this podcast, they were back in New York with Othello, the remix.

I survived the impossible, caught in gang crossfire and crawled to the hospital.

My hood was riots and uprising. Mama's so cracked out she don't recognize me.

Othello is a rapper who rockets to stardom when he teams up with a diva named Desdemona.

Othello hands out favors to the members of his crew, but he's not fair about it,

which leaves the rapper, Iago, jealous that he's not getting his share of the limelight. GQ and

JAQ took time out between performances to talk with Barbara Bogave, and before we hear

their talk, here's a little more of the show. This is the song that introduces us to

...