Will Tosh Archives - The Play Podcast

Will Tosh

by Douglas Schatz | Oct 21, 2025 | Contributor

Will Tosh

Dr Will Tosh is the Director of Education at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. He is responsible for dramaturgy, events for students and adult learners, and for the Globe’s scholarly research programme. He is the host of ‘That Is The Question’, the Globe’s award-winning YouTube series.

He is also the author of three books, Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse; Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England; and most recently Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare.

Podcast Episode(s)

104 - Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Recommended Play(s)

Will recommended Cressida by Nicholas Wright.

104 – Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

by Douglas Schatz | Oct 21, 2025 | Podcast Episodes

Ronke Adekoluejo as Viola
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, September 2025
Photo by Helen Murray

104 – Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

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William Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will is one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, renowned for its clever cross-dressing plot and festive hi-jinks, but also for its ambiguous tone, fluctuating between the comic and a darker cruelty, as well as for its rendition of fluid gender and desire. The second part of the play’s full title points to the license on display in the characters’ search for love, identity and status. It is also an offer to us, the audience, to make we will of what Shakespeare presents.

As we record this episode a new production of Twelfth Night is playing at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London, which highlights the play’s mix of the carnival and the sober, the joy and the woe. I’m delighted to welcome to the podcast the Globe’s Director of Education, Dr Will Tosh.

Dr Will Tosh

Recommended Play

Will recommended Cressida by Nicholas Wright.

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes that accompany our episode on William Shakespeare’s subversive romantic comedy, Twelfth Night or What You Will, include additional notes on the characters of Viola and Sebastian.

Footnotes for Patrons

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The Texts

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.