Shakespeare's Shadows

featuring interviews with actor Harry Lennix
and University of California, Santa Barbara professor Jim Kearney

After forcefully taking the English throne in the play Richard II, Bolingbroke a.k.a. Henry IV struggles to keep hold of the crown himself. UCSB professor Jim Kearney and actor Harry Lennix (Titus, The Matrix Reloaded, NBC’s The Blacklist) delve into Henry IV’s fraught relationship with his son (the future King Henry V), the stark difference in his leadership style from Richard II's, and the prophecy that keeps Henry IV believing he’s destined to fight a holy war in Jerusalem. Lennix also discusses his film adaptation, H4, that places the text of Henry IV Part 1 and 2 in the experience of modern black America.

featuring interviews with actors Fran Kranz and John Slade
and University of California, Irvine professor Julia Lupton

Lear’s descent into madness, varying interpretations of a pivotal moment with his daughter Cordelia, and where there may be optimism within the arc of one of the Bard’s greatest tragic characters are all discussed in the first episode of Shakespeare’s Shadows with UC Irvine professor Julia Lupton, John Slade (a familiar face to frequenters of Southern California Shakespeare productions), and Fran Kranz (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing).

This episode contains explicit language.

featuring interviews with actors Patrice Jean-Baptiste and Simon Paisley Day and Gonzaga University professor Heather Easterling

One of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, “The Taming of the Shrew,” gets put under the microscope in this episode as we examine the character Petruchio, the man who supposedly tames the play’s titular shrew. Discussed in this episode is what impact the play’s induction scene has on our perception of the play’s characters, Petruchio’s “taming” methods, and the ongoing debate about whether “Taming of the Shrew” should be retired from performance.

Guests on this episode are Patrice Jean-Baptiste (she/her), who spoke with Shakespeare’s Shadows in the midst of playing Petruchio in September 2023 in Boston with the Actors’ Shakespeare Project; Simon Paisley Day (he/him), who reflected back on taking on the role at Shakespeare’s Globe in London in 2012, and Dr. Heather Easterling (she/her), professor of English and of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Gonzaga University.

This episode contains explicit language and discussion of domestic abuse and domestic violence.

featuring interviews with actor Bally Gill
and University of the Pacific professor Courtney Lehmann

One half of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers is in the spotlight in this episode, which explores how this character goes from bad poet to good poet, what it takes to deliver an authentic and naturalistic Romeo, and how the introduction of the rapier to England shortly before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet was a deadly game-changer in street brawls.

Guests on this episode are Dr. Courtney Lehmann, professor of English and Film Studies at the University of the Pacific and writer of the book Screen Adaptations: Romeo and Juliet: A close study of the relationship between text and film, and Bally Gill, who played Romeo at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2018, winning the prestigious Ian Charleston Award for the role. He has just made his return to the RSC, currently playing Oberon and Theseus in their Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In “Henry V,” King Henry gets a new foil: the French Dauphin, the heir apparent in France, England’s rival. In the conflict that culminates in the Battle of Agincourt, Shakespeare depicts the English with layers and complexity and ultimately with a great deal of nobility. Meanwhile, the French (in the text and sometimes even more so in performance) come off as arrogant, foppish, and often quite silly. This episode delves into discussion of the Dauphin’s relationship with his father the king, where Shakespeare diverges from real history, and how — even in a history play set at wartime — this character can be mined for a lot of comedy.

Guests on this episode are Stephen Michael Spencer, who played the Dauphin at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in 2023, and Dr. Elizabeth Pentland, a professor at York University in Toronto who specializes in Renaissance literature, including research on literary exchanges between England and France during the period of the French civil wars.