Shakespeare’s work is alive and well, and his work continues to illuminate and inform who we are. The Dubuque Shakespeare Project acts as a focal point for celebrating the Bard’s work in the Tristate area.

In 2023, we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, which is among the most influential books ever published.

Carnegie-Stout Public Library launches a monthly series in which participants will examine Shakespeare’s work in somewhat chronological order. The series will highlight common themes across plays and narrative poems and will chart the writer’s growth as a dramatist. As a starting point, each month’s discussion will place the work in the contexts of Shakespeare’s canon and the play’s relevance to our current human condition.

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Today

The Making Of A Leader

Carnegie-Stout Public Library 360 W 11th Street, Dubuque, IA, United States

Shakespeare first gained notice with his early histories chronicling the Wars of the Roses. When he started work on the prequels that lay the historical basis for the Wars of the Roses ending in the short triumphant reign of Henry V, Shakespeare’s interests and talents had grown too big for any one genre. Though nominally histories, Shakespeare questions everything from the monarchy itself and delves deep into the qualities that seem to […]

Discussion: Richard II

Carnegie-Stout Public Library 360 W 11th Street, Dubuque, IA, United States

Synopsis: A poetic history written entirely in verse, Richard II is about the struggle between the legitimate but tyrannical Richard and the competent plainspoken Bolingbroke who is wronged yet unsympathetic. Exquisitely balanced in plot, character and tone, the play raises several troubling questions about the divine right of kings. Discussion Topics: Richard is highly performative with theatrically extravagant gestures, but in many ways opposite of the performative Richard III who invites the […]