On November 13, 2015, a group of artists and city officials stood in a theater lobby in Chicago,

ready to give their city an audacious gift.

Thank you, Mayor, thank you, Jenny, and all of our distinguished and beloved guests.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and this city dreams big.

With those words, Barbara Gaines, founder and artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, kicked off Shakespeare 400 Chicago, a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's

death like no other in the world.

Behind the announcement was an unprecedented mobilization of the

city's cultural and administrative resources. Just how unprecedented was made clear by the presence

at the ceremony of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

And so to everybody that's here that has made Chicago unique, made Chicago home, and to the intellectual

and cultural enrichment of this great city, Shakespeare 400 Chicago will continue to

both honor Shakespeare and honor in our great city.

So to all of you, thank you very much. from the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

This podcast is called In This City Will I Stay?

Shakespeare 400 Chicago has been over now for four months time,

which is enough to take stock and give an impression of how it went. We asked Barbara Gaines to do

just that, and she was kind enough to agree. She's interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

Well, just so everyone listening has a sense of the enormity of Shakespeare 400, why don't we start with a speed round of statistics?

How many theaters participated? How many people attended that kind of thing? Overwhelm us. Okay, here we go. We had 60 cultural partners in this effort. We had 8663 events, 1,000-plus artists, 1.1 million attendees, and 38 restaurants and chefs participated.

I mean, that's like the Olympics of Shakespeare.

And there was an international component, too, right, that went from straight-up performances.

...