On today's episode, How the Modernist Writers of London's Bloomsbury Group made Shakespeare their own.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger Director.

Marjorie Garber is the William R. Keenan Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental

Studies at Harvard University.

Although she's well known as a Renaissance scholar, Garber's interests have varied widely, from

sexuality studies and representations of gender to dogs and real estate.

Garber's most recent book, her 20th, is called Shakespeare in Bloomsbury.

In it, she traces the influence of Shakespeare on the members of the Bloomsbury group.

That circle of early 20th century intellectuals included novelists like Virginia Wolf and E.M. Forster,

critic and biographer Lytton Strraiti, economist John Maynard

Keynes, as well as other artists and critics. As Garber illustrates, the group shared an

abiding fascination with Shakespeare. In particular, Virginia Woolf considered Shakespeare

a kind of rival and inspiration for her own literary output. Wolf threaded

quotations and references to Shakespeare throughout novels such as Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and the

Waves. Garber's insightful reading of Wolf's diaries and essays reveal a writer deeply interested

in the model Shakespeare set for a fellow artist and literary mind.

Wolfe's fellow Bloomsbury writers and artists were also deeply influenced by Shakespeare,

so much so that Garber claims him as an unacknowledged member of the Bloomsbury group.

Here's Marjorie Garber in conversation with Barbara Bogave.

You have a subheading to the introduction of your book. It's a Virginia Woolf quote,

how Shakespeare would have loved us, which is great. It sounds so much like Virginia Woolf,

but it's maybe not a foregone conclusion.

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