Near the end of The Tempest, Prospero vows to retire from practicing the "rough magic" he has mastered, to break his magical staff and drown his spellbooks. After 14 seasons as Artistic Director of Canada's Stratford Festival, Antoni Cimolino has chosen to direct The Tempest as part of his final season before he, too, enters retirement.

As possibly the final play Shakespeare wrote alone, The Tempest has often represented a goodbye, or at least a sea change. For Cimolino, who started his career in Stratford nearly 40 years ago, it's a big change indeed. The documentary This Above All, premiering later this month, follows his tenure leading North America's largest classical repertory company through a historic expansion, a pandemic, and dozens of powerful productions.

In this episode, Cimolino discusses revisiting a play, the power of forgiveness, the show that sparked his love for theater, the surprising role toaster ovens played in his early career, and the "rough magic" that makes theater possible.

Imagine being able to dig through Shakespeare's manuscripts and ask him about his writing process. Did King Lear survive in the first draft? What if Hamlet originally said, "To live or not to live?"

While we can only dream about that opportunity, scholar and Everyday Shakespeare host Caroline Bicks experienced something close to it when she gained unprecedented access to the archives of another famous author: Stephen King.

The Bard of Avon and the King of Horror have more in common than you might think. Both are popular and prolific authors who have been praised and derided for writing for the masses. But both also pay close attention to the sounds of words, the flow of names, and the rhythms of sentences. And sometimes, King's work even takes inspiration from Shakespeare himself.

In this episode, Bicks draws fascinating parallels between Shakespeare and King and shares how she became the first scholar permitted to explore King's personal papers. Her book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King recounts her chance to live every scholar's dream—while surrounded by the stuff of nightmares.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 28, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

It's been more than 400 years since she first appeared on stage, and she's still controversial. Margaret of Anjou appears in not one, not two, but four of Shakespeare's plays—Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 as well as Richard III—maturing from a young bride-to-be to a vengeful widow. She also speaks the most lines of any of Shakespeare's female characters.

Although her historical counterpart never saw battle, Shakespeare's Margaret leads armies. And while the real Margaret was permanently exiled to France, the Shakespearean version returns to England to confront her old foes.

Charles O'Malley and Scott W. Stern, co-authors of Shakespeare's Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen, share how Margaret exists as an avatar for anxieties about women in power throughout the ages. Shakespeare's depiction may have been influenced by Elizabeth I, but Margaret has been portrayed on stage as a witch, a seductress, an anti-fascist resistance fighter, and even an analogue for Margaret Thatcher.

In this episode, O'Malley and Stern shine the spotlight on Shakespeare's most deliciously complex anti-heroine.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 14, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Pat Mesiti-Miller in Oakland and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.