Watch a scene between Shylock and Portia from Shakespeare's “The Merchant of Venice”

Contunico © ZDF Studios GmbH, Mainz

Learn how cheese is made, including how holes form in certain types of cheese.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Astaire's first screen test earned him a negative review: “Can't act, can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little.”

© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

The science behind the appealing aroma of bacon cooking.

Courtesy of the British Film Institute

Puck putting “a girdle round about the earth” to gather the love-in-idleness flower in the 1909 silent film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This scene occurs in Act II, scene 1, of Shakespeare's play.

Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

A teacher explains why Hamlet is her favourite Shakespeare play to teach.

Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

An introduction to William F. Friedman, the breaker of the Japanese Purple code in World War II. Friedman learned cryptanalysis while investigating the hypothesis that Francis Bacon wrote the plays of William Shakespeare; encoded clues in the printed text supposedly proved Bacon's authorship.

Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

A look at an illustrated manuscript by Ralph Brooke, a herald in the English College of Arms in the 1590s. During that period, the college granted coats of arms to a prominent fishmonger and to William Shakespeare, but Brooke considered both applicants unworthy.