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

Folger's director. This podcast is called Speak to Me as to Thy Thinkings. It looks at the relevance of

Shakespeare to modern life. How this work, written so long ago, can still speak to us about problems we

face today.

Actors and directors always strive, of course, to make sure their Shakespeare performances have something to say to the audience.

But it's probably in the Academy, at colleges and universities, that the search for new meaning in Shakespeare is most thoroughly realized.

That's what we're going to look at in this podcast.

Here to explore the idea of learning something new from Shakespeare's plays are Gail Kern Pastor, my predecessor as director of the Folger,

and Jeremy Lopez, Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto, who has been a national

endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Folger.

They're interviewed by Rebecca Shear.

When we look at Shakespeare, we might think to ourselves, okay, these plays were written

400 years ago. Scholars have been pouring over them for all that time.

So there's nothing left we can possibly learn from them.

Gail, you obviously don't agree.

We change. I mean, we are not the same culture.

Our preoccupations are different. Our interests are different.

And it's from those interests and preoccupations that we ask questions of the plays and expect them to come back to us with interesting answers.

But I guess we tend to assume people have always asked questions about Shakespeare's plays.

But Jeremy, is that true?

I mean, I guess people have probably always asked questions about Shakespeare.

Like, what was that play about?

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