From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

This podcast is called Fetch me a Stoop of Liquor.

It should not be surprising that two English professors would be in love both with the sophisticated delights of the cocktail hour

and the sophisticated delights of William Shakespeare.

What's more surprising, though, is that they have decided to join these two loves and create a book

of Bard-inspired cocktail recipes with names like Kate's Shrewdriver and Hamlet's Unweeded Garden Springrolls.

Caroline Bix, a professor at Boston College, and Michelle Ephraim, a professor at Worcester Polytechnical Institute, have written Shakespeare Not Sturred, which they say

promises cocktails for your everyday dramas. We ask them to come in and explain.

They're interviewed by Rebecca Shear.

Tell us what this book isn't, because people might hear about it, look at the title, and think it's something that it's not.

Right.

Well, we say this right up front in our introduction to the book, actually, that we are not the kind of people who go to Renaissance fairs or dress up or serve Henry the Eighth style mutton legs at neighborhood block parties.

Although we respect those people.

Absolutely.

Now, so this is not a historical book about the food and drinks that Shakespeare and friends ate. This is very much a modern book about modern unique cocktails and hors d'oeuvres that are

inspired by Shakespeare's characters.

And do I understand it correctly that all of this came out of a blog you two used to write?

Yes.

Yeah, we started about four years ago blogging at something we invented called Everyday Shakespeare,

and it was a place for us to unload and talk about the ways that our lives felt like they were part of a Shakespeare play.

So we, for example, might think about, well, I'm having a problem about

...