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This is a special discussing episode, recorded live as a zoom event last year. Travelling Players in Early Modern England: Civic Spaces and Provincial Performance was an online event on the upcoming exhibition at the Guildhall of Stratford-upon-Avon Featuring Dr William David Green and host Robert Crighton In celebration of an upcoming exhibition at the Guildhall of Stratford-upon-Avon, we discussing all things about touring theatre in early modern England (1560s through to 1622) and the use of civic buildings like guildhalls as regional theatre venues by the professional playing companies. The reasons for, and the practicalities of, taking plays on tour outside London, as well as success stories and horror stories from companies on tour. All this, and more, to whet your appetite for the exhibition, which will open at Stratford-upon-Avon's Guildhall in January 2025. Go to their website for more information - https://www.shakespearesschoolroom.org/theatre-at-the-guildhall Will Green - is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Nottingham and Resident Historian at Shakespeare's Schoolroom & Guildhall. He received his PhD from the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute in 2021, and his work has appeared in journals including Theatre Notebook, Critical Survey, and The Explicator. Recently, he served as the lead editor on the essay collection The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton, 1624-2024 (alongside Anna Hegland and Sam Jermy), and he is currently completing his first solo-authored book on Middleton's drama during the 1620s, which will be published by Routledge in 2025. Our patrons received this episode in December 2024 - approx. 1 month early. The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is supported by its patrons – become a patron and you get to choose the plays we work on next. Go to www.patreon.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you want to give us some feedback, email us at admin@beyondshakespeare.org, follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram @BeyondShakes or go to our website: https://beyondshakespeare.org You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel where (most of) our exploring sessions live - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLa4pXxGZFwTX4QSaB5XNdQ The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is hosted and produced by Robert Crighton.
SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived
In this special episode, Abigail Rokison-Woodall, Deputy Director (Education) and Associate Professor in Shakespeare and Theatre at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, talks to Sebastian Michael about the challenges – and joys – of speaking verse in general and Shakespearean verse in particular: how do we do his language justice in a contemporary performance setting and how do we deal with the ways in which the English Renaissance approach to language differs from ours; with a focus also, of course, on the significance this has for reading and reciting the Sonnets.
Welcome to this edited version of our live discussion of The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton It was an online event celebrating the publication of The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton, 1624-2024 Featuring Drs Will Green, Anna L. Hegland, Sam Jermy; with host Robert Crighton. You can purchase the book online at... https://www.routledge.com/The-Theatrical-Legacy-of-Thomas-Middleton-1624-2024/Green-Hegland-Jermy/p/book/9781032556093 You can also sign up for Early Bird Tickets for our Live Recording of A Game at Chess on the 11th of August at the White Bear - tickets will go to our early sign ups and patrons first. If you can't make it to our live show, then there will be online readings of the play from the 5th August, mirroring the original performance dates of A Game at Chess 400 years ago. Sign up to read along with us! For more info on all our events this year, go to our Game at Chess webpage. The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton, 1624-2024 marks the 400th anniversary of Middleton's final and most contentious work for the public theatres, A Game at Chess (1624), presenting readers with a celebration of the impact and lasting salience of Middleton's body of dramatic works from 1624 up to the present day. This live event brings the editors of this collection together to discuss Middleton, and the book they have produced. The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton, 1624-2024 marks the 400th anniversary of Middleton's final and most contentious work for the public theatres, A Game at Chess (1624), presenting readers with a celebration of the impact and lasting salience of Middleton's body of dramatic works from 1624 up to the present day. The collection is divided into three sections: ‘Critical and Textual Reception', ‘Afterlives and Legacies', and ‘Practice and Performance'. This division reflects the book's holistic approach to Middleton's dramatic canon, and its emphasis on the continuing significance of Middleton's writing to the study of early modern English drama. The book offers an assessment of the place of Middleton's drama in culture, criticism, and education today, through a variety of critical approaches. Featuring work from a range of voices (from early career, independent, and seasoned academics and practitioners), this collection will be of interest to specialists in early modern literature and drama who are interested in both theory and practice, and students or scholars researching Middleton's historical significance to the study of early theatre. Dr. Will Green is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Nottingham, and an associate tutor in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. He received his PhD from the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute in 2021, and his work has appeared in journals including Exchanges, Theatre Notebook, and Critical Survey. Dr Anna L. Hegland is an advisor in The Aspire Center and adjunct professor at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She earned a PhD in Medieval and Early Modern Studies from the University of Kent in 2022. Her research examines the intertwining of rhetoric and action in early modern English theatre during moments of staged violence, combining textual and practice-based methods to think about enactment and embodiment then and now. Her work is published in the British Shakespeare Association's Teaching Shakespeare magazine, Shakespeare Bulletin, and Symbolism, and a chapter on Middleton appears in the recent edited collection Boundaries of Violence (Routledge, 2023). Dr. Sam Jermy is an independent researcher whose research explores the ways that masculinities are imagined, staged, articulated, and problematised across Thomas Middleton's body of work. They have published reviews in Shakespeare Bulletin and Urban History, and appeared as a guest on several podcasts including That Shakespeare Life and The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast. The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is supported by its patrons – become a patron and you get to choose the plays we work on next. Go to www.patreon.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you want to give us some feedback, email us at admin@beyondshakespeare.org, follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram @BeyondShakes or go to our website: https://beyondshakespeare.org You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel where (most of) our exploring sessions live - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLa4pXxGZFwTX4QSaB5XNdQ The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is hosted and produced by Robert Crighton.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire. By convention a wedding means a happy ending and here there are three, but neither Orsino nor Viola, Olivia nor Sebastian know much of each other's true character and even the identities of the twins Viola and Sebastian have only just been revealed to their spouses to be. These twins gain some financial security but it is unclear what precisely the older Orsino and Olivia find enduringly attractive in the adolescent objects of their love. Meanwhile their hopes and illusions are framed by the fury of Malvolio, tricked into trusting his mistress Olivia loved him and who swears an undefined revenge on all those who mocked him.With Pascale Aebischer Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Performance Studies at the University of ExeterMichael Dobson Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of BirminghamAnd Emma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of OxfordProduced by Simon Tillotson, Victoria Brignell and Luke MulhallReading list:C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedies: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (first published 1959; Princeton University Press, 2011)Simone Chess, ‘Queer Residue: Boy Actors' Adult Careers in Early Modern England' (Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19.4, 2020)Callan Davies, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620 (Routledge, 2023)Frances E. Dolan, Twelfth Night: Language and Writing (Bloomsbury, 2014)John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares (Psychology Press, 2002), especially ‘Disrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies' by Catherine BelseyBart van Es, Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016) Sonya Freeman Loftis, Mardy Philippian and Justin P. Shaw (eds.), Inclusive Shakespeares: Identity, Pedagogy, Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), especially ‘”I am all the daughters of my father's house, and all the brothers too”: Genderfluid Potentiality in As You Like It and Twelfth Night' by Eric Brinkman Ezra Horbury, ‘Transgender Reassessments of the Cross-Dressed Page in Shakespeare, Philaster, and The Honest Man's Fortune' (Shakespeare Quarterly 73, 2022) Jean Howard, ‘Crossdressing, the theatre, and gender struggle in early modern England' (Shakespeare Quarterly 39, 1988)Harry McCarthy, Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022)Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 1996)William Shakespeare (eds. Michael Dobson and Molly Mahood), Twelfth Night (Penguin, 2005)William Shakespeare (ed. Keir Elam), Twelfth Night (Arden Shakespeare, 2008)Emma Smith, This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright (Pelican, 2019)Victoria Sparey, Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester University Press, 2024)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire. By convention a wedding means a happy ending and here there are three, but neither Orsino nor Viola, Olivia nor Sebastian know much of each other's true character and even the identities of the twins Viola and Sebastian have only just been revealed to their spouses to be. These twins gain some financial security but it is unclear what precisely the older Orsino and Olivia find enduringly attractive in the adolescent objects of their love. Meanwhile their hopes and illusions are framed by the fury of Malvolio, tricked into trusting his mistress Olivia loved him and who swears an undefined revenge on all those who mocked him.With Pascale Aebischer Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Performance Studies at the University of ExeterMichael Dobson Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of BirminghamAnd Emma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of OxfordProduced by Simon Tillotson, Victoria Brignell and Luke MulhallReading list:C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedies: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (first published 1959; Princeton University Press, 2011)Simone Chess, ‘Queer Residue: Boy Actors' Adult Careers in Early Modern England' (Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19.4, 2020)Callan Davies, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620 (Routledge, 2023)Frances E. Dolan, Twelfth Night: Language and Writing (Bloomsbury, 2014)John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares (Psychology Press, 2002), especially ‘Disrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies' by Catherine BelseyBart van Es, Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016) Sonya Freeman Loftis, Mardy Philippian and Justin P. Shaw (eds.), Inclusive Shakespeares: Identity, Pedagogy, Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), especially ‘”I am all the daughters of my father's house, and all the brothers too”: Genderfluid Potentiality in As You Like It and Twelfth Night' by Eric Brinkman Ezra Horbury, ‘Transgender Reassessments of the Cross-Dressed Page in Shakespeare, Philaster, and The Honest Man's Fortune' (Shakespeare Quarterly 73, 2022) Jean Howard, ‘Crossdressing, the theatre, and gender struggle in early modern England' (Shakespeare Quarterly 39, 1988)Harry McCarthy, Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022)Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 1996)William Shakespeare (eds. Michael Dobson and Molly Mahood), Twelfth Night (Penguin, 2005)William Shakespeare (ed. Keir Elam), Twelfth Night (Arden Shakespeare, 2008)Emma Smith, This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright (Pelican, 2019)Victoria Sparey, Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester University Press, 2024)
Thomas Dabbs talks with Tiffany Stern of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, about her recent perspectives on ballads in early modern drama, on Edmond Malone's 18th-century scholarship, and on her editorial work in Shakespeare and 16th-century literature
What makes the First Folio so important and unique? 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the first published collection of Shakespeare's plays. In this episode, I talk to Chris Laoutaris, author of Shakespeare's Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio. Chris gives us fascinating insights into the human story of this book that was produced seven years after Shakespeare's death. The story of the people, places, and contexts that were all part of the creation of this work still have their effect on what Shakespeare means to us today. Chris Laoutaris is associate professor at The Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. He is a biographer, historian & a poet. Shakespeare's Book has been selected as a BBC History Magazine Book of the Year (selected by Tracy Borman). It was also a Financial Times Best Summer Book. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michaela-mahlberg/message
Did you know that Shakespeare was really into astrology? We sure didn't, which is why we're joined by Kelly Downes, who gives us a great discussion to bookend our Supernatural Shakespeare series! Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, assassination, religious persecution, suicide, sex, fire, poisoning, war and battle. Guest Kelly Downes (she/her) is a theatre maker from Syracuse, NY, with strong ties to Boston, MA, currently living in Birmingham UK. She earned a BFA in Theatre & Performance from Emerson College, and a Masters in Shakespeare & Creativity from the Shakespeare Institute at University of Birmingham. Kelly is currently working to increase accessibility to arts and culture in Birmingham as a fundraiser at Midlands Arts Centre. She would love to connect with more like minded creatives on both sides of the Atlantic. If you are interested in queer Shakespeare; using storytelling to reconnect with the natural world; and devising new work inspired by classics, say hello! Housekeeping - Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends audiobooks! From Libby. - Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests' books, and more at https://spiritspodcast.com/books - Call to Action: Check out Games and Feelings! Sponsors - Wildgrain is the first bake-from-frozen box for artisanal bread. For a limited time, you can get $30 off the first box - PLUS free Croissants in every box - when you go to https://wildgrain.com/Spirits to start your subscription. - Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles, available in your local game store or on Amazon today! - BetterHelp is an online therapy service. Get 10% off your first month at https://betterhelp.com/spirits Find Us Online - Website & Transcripts: https://spiritspodcast.com - Patreon: https://patreon.com/spiritspodcast - Merch: https://spiritspodcast.com/merch - Instagram: https://instagram.com/spiritspodcast - Twitter: https://twitter.com/spiritspodcast - Tumblr: https://spiritspodcast.tumblr.com - Goodreads: https://goodreads.com/group/show/205387 Cast & Crew - Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin - Editor: Bren Frederick - Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod - Artwork: Allyson Wakeman - Multitude: https://multitude.productions About Us Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most popular romantic comedies. At the same time, it's a play that explores the darker and more dangerous side of love. Four young lovers flee into the forest where their romantic entanglements become even more entangled thanks to the magic of the fairy king, Oberon — who also puts a spell on his wife, Titania, so she falls in love with Bottom, a man with an enchanted donkey's head. In this course, you'll learn the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream, discover how the play's fantastical elements actually represent universal issues in our everyday lives, and hear the play's key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Tiffany Stern, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the Shakespeare Institute. Professor Stern discusses the play's context, structure, and distinctive mix of comedy and tragedy, as created by the “play-within-a-play” — the “tragic” story of Pyramus and Thisbe performed by one group of characters to celebrate the others' weddings. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most popular romantic comedies. At the same time, it's a play that explores the darker and more dangerous side of love. Four young lovers flee into the forest where their romantic entanglements become even more entangled thanks to the magic of the fairy king, Oberon — who also puts a spell on his wife, Titania, so she falls in love with Bottom, a man with an enchanted donkey's head. In this course, you'll learn the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream, discover how the play's fantastical elements actually represent universal issues in our everyday lives, and hear the play's key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Tiffany Stern, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the Shakespeare Institute. Professor Stern discusses the play's context, structure, and distinctive mix of comedy and tragedy, as created by the “play-within-a-play” — the “tragic” story of Pyramus and Thisbe performed by one group of characters to celebrate the others' weddings. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts
Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, telling the story of one of history's most famous events. In this tense political thriller, the Roman senator Brutus must decide whether to assassinate the powerful military general Julius Caesar in order to save Roman Republic — and the audience must decide whether Brutus made the right choice. In this course, you'll learn how Shakespeare dramatized the historical event of Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE, and particularly how he linked refined political rhetoric, aspiration toward Roman ideals, and acts of savage violence. You'll also hear the play's key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham. Professor Dobson discusses the Roman history behind Julius Caesar and the cultural role of classical Rome during the Renaissance, when Shakespeare was writing. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, telling the story of one of history's most famous events. In this tense political thriller, the Roman senator Brutus must decide whether to assassinate the powerful military general Julius Caesar in order to save Roman Republic — and the audience must decide whether Brutus made the right choice. In this course, you'll learn how Shakespeare dramatized the historical event of Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE, and particularly how he linked refined political rhetoric, aspiration toward Roman ideals, and acts of savage violence. You'll also hear the play's key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham. Professor Dobson discusses the Roman history behind Julius Caesar and the cultural role of classical Rome during the Renaissance, when Shakespeare was writing. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts
2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publishing of the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. Eighteen of those plays, including Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, had never been published before they appeared in the First Folio, which means that without it, they might have been lost. But how did the First Folio come to be? It turns out that this book's story has enough twists to fill out a five-act play. It has its own heroes, villains, and political subtext. And the success of the Folio itself was far from a sure thing. Dr. Chris Laoutaris's new book, Shakespeare's Book: The Story Behind the First Folio and the Making of Shakespeare, re-examines everything we thought we knew about the publication of the First Folio, and uncovers some new information in the archives. He is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Chris Laoutaris is a biographer, historian, poet, Shakespeare scholar, and Associate Professor at The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Shakespeare Beyond Borders Alliance and the Co-Founder of the EQUALityShakespeare (EQUALS) initiative. He is also the author of Shakespeare and the Countess: The Battle that Gave Birth to the Globe. Shakespeare's Book: The Story Behind the First Folio and the Making of Shakespeare is out now from Pegasus Books. From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 9, 2023. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Melvin Rickarby in Stratford-upon-Avon and Andy Plovnick at Bunker Studios in Brooklyn. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.
On this episode of Talking History: when did Shakespeare become known as The Bard, and why does Macbeth still exert such a powerful hold on audiences hundreds of years later? Join Dr Patrick Geoghegan as he discusses witchcraft, murder and the influence of the Gunpowder Plot on the play with Prof Sandra Clark from the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, Dr. Abigail Rokison-Woodall from The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, Prof Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Hertford College Oxford, and Prof Farah Karim-Cooper, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, King's College London and Director of Education & Research at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
Hamlet is the Shakespearean character that many actors long to play. Jade Anouka is one of those actors. She talks to past Hamlets– Sir Derek Jacobi, Adrian Lester, Samuel West and Tessa Parr – about the challenges in approaching the part. And she hears the fabled story of The Red Book, a red-bound copy of the play, begun by the actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robinson, who passed the book on to a successive actor on the condition that in turn they passed it onto the finest Hamlet of the next generation. Derek Jacobi tells the story of receiving it from Peter O'Toole and passing it on to Kenneth Branagh, who in turn passed it on to Tom Hiddleston. Jade wonders where the book might go next. Jade also explores why Hamlet as a part holds such fascination for actors. Here's the rub - no one can tell you what Hamlet is about. A revenge tragedy, an Oedipal drama, a political betrayal, a study of insanity, the portrait of a fatally flawed genius. Each actor makes it his own but has to deal with the weight of its history. Derek Jacobi tells the story of performing ‘To be or not to be' only to hear the voice of Sir Winston Churchill joining in from the front row. Adrian Lester describes how he whispered each famous speech to himself in an attempt to get back to the essence of the language. And each generation interprets Hamlet as an expression of their own time. Professor Michael Dobson from the Shakespeare Institute describes a production he saw in Ukraine in a cellar now used as a bomb shelter. Readers: Sir Derek Jacobi, Adrian Lester, Samuel West, Tessa Parr Producer: Sara Conkey A True Thought production for BBC Radio 4 Acknowledgements: Hamlet BBC2 26th December 2009 Director - Gregory Doran Royal Shakespeare Company Production Hamlet – David Tennant Composer: Paul Englishby Hamlet film 1948 Director – Laurence Olivier Screenplay – Laurence Olivier Hamlet – Laurence Olivier Composer: William Walton Two Cities Production Hamlet BBC Radio 4 Production 2014 Director – Marc Beeby Hamlet – Jamie Parker Ophelia – Lizzy Watts President Zelensky address to Parliament BBC Parliament Tuesday 8th March 2022
This month marks the fifth anniversary of Unsound Methods - thank you to everyone who's joined us along the way, and hello to any new arrivals... In this episode we speak to Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey about the writing of their collaboratively composed novel 'Macbeth, Macbeth' (available from Boiler House Press, here: https://www.boilerhouse.press/product-page/macbeth-macbeth-by-ewan-fernie-simon-palfrey) 'Macbeth, Macbeth' is described by its authors as a critical fiction. A sequel, critique, and repetition of Shakespeare's play. Slavoj Žižek has described it as: ‘a miracle, an instant classic… as close as one can come to a quantum physics literary criticism'. A video trailer for the book is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru-seZCr3Ho Ewan Fernie is Director of the 2-million-pound lottery-funded ‘Everything to Everybody' Project (everythingtoeverybody.bham.ac.uk), which is reviving the world's first great Shakespeare library and Birmingham's broader reputation as a pioneering modern city. It was a major influence on the Cultural Programme and the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. His day-job is as Chair, Professor and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and Culture Lead for the College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham. Ewan's books include: Shame in Shakespeare, The Demonic: Literature and Experience, Shakespeare for Freedom, Spiritual Shakespeares, Redcrosse: Remaking Religious Poetry for Today's World, Thomas Mann and Shakespeare: Something Rich and Strange, and New Places: Shakespeare and Civic Creativity. For many years, he co-edited the groundbreaking ‘Shakespeare Now!' series with Simon Palfrey. In 2018, he hosted Radical Mischief: Inviting Experiment in Theatre, Thought and Politics with the Royal Shakespeare Company's Deputy Director, Erica Whyman at The Other Place. He is now leading a new project, Serious About Comedy, with Sean Foley, Artistic Director of Birmingham REP, as well as an ambitious cross-cultural initiative with the Birmingham-based artist and curator, Mohammed Ali of Soul City Arts. He is writing a book about the Scottish writer and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, provisionally entitled The Dirty History of Hope. Simon Palfrey is Professor of English at Brasenose College Oxford University. His recent work explores the unique kinds of life generated by dramatic, poetic, and fictional forms, and the opportunities this opens up for more imaginative, philosophically adventurous, and politically engaged critical work. His books include Doing Shakespeare (Arden, 2004; 2nd ed. 2011), a TLS International Book of the Year; Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford, 2007, with Tiffany Stern), the MRDS Book of the Year; Poor Tom: living King Lear (Chicago, 2014); Shakespeare's Possible Worlds (Cambridge, 2014) Simon's current projects are inspired by Spenser's Faerie Queene, including a new bestiary, A Poem Come True, and the twice AHRC-award winning Demons Land, a mixed media event (film, drama, dance, paintings, sculptures, soundscapes, text) that imagines an island built in the image of Spenser's epic poem (demonsland.com). Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan Or at jaimiebatchan.com and lochlanbloom.com We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
This is a talk with Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, located in Stratford-upon-Avon. Here we talk about the Shakespeare Institute's programs and mission and also about Michael's recent work on Shakespeare in national repertories across the globe.
We're hitting pause on our look through Shakespearean soliloquies to take a moment to share our latest discovery! With the inspiration of Kyara Hunter, a Masters student at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, we're bringing to you the idea of another type of formatting: Bullet Formatting What's this? How is it different from verse or paragraph? And how do Abbot and Costello use it in their famous "Who's on First?" routine? Picture: Abbot and Costello "Who's on First?" - Kate and Petruchio in Gaudete Academy's "Taming of the Shrew" (2010) - "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" at the Old Vic Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/hamlettohamilton Website: http://www.hamlettohamilton.com
Henry IV Part 1 has long been one of Shakespeare's most beloved history plays. In the 1590s, Shakespeare wrote a series of eight plays based on English chronicle history. This play is named for Henry IV, who deposed Richard II to become king in 1399. But the most captivating characters for many readers prove to be Sir John Falstaff and Henry IV's son Hal – the prince who would go on to become the legendary Henry V. In this course, you'll learn the story of Henry IV Part 1, hear the play's key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars, and watch how Hal navigates his historical destiny and forges his personal identity in a process he calls “redeeming time.” In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Ewan Fernie, Chair, Professor and Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute and Director of the ‘Everything to Everybody' Project. You'll learn the historical context behind the play and encounter the extraordinary places and people - from the royal court to the taverns of London, from the honor-driven soldier Hotspur to the unforgettable rogue Falstaff - who shape Hal's future and offer a panoramic view of English society, within and beyond the official annals of history. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean.
Richard II is at once a masterwork of poetry and a bloody account of political plotting. In the 1590s, Shakespeare wrote a series of eight plays based on English chronicle history. Richard II is the first play chronologically in that series, telling the story of a king whose fall helped set in motion the political contentions and civil wars for decades to come. In 1399, Richard II was deposed by his cousin Bolingbroke, who became King Henry IV. But in Shakespeare's play, what Richard loses in political power, he gains in dramatic power. In this course, you'll learn the story and historical context behind Richard II, explore the complex political dimensions depicted in this transition of power, and see how Shakespeare develops this unusual protagonist who wants to be a tragic character. In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Michael Dobson, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham and Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. You'll learn the historical background behind the play and start to explore the play's central ambiguities concerning Richard's political moves and Richard's own character. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean.
Shakespeare uses the word “pearl” over 40 times across his works. He describes them as objects of high value, and in Troilus and Cressida, uses the pearl to describe a rare and valuable woman saying “she is a pearl, Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships.” The pearl trade was an industry well established under Henry VIII of England, who looked to the pearl trade as a way to strengthen England's international relations after separation from Catholicism left them in need of some strong allies. Elizabeth I continued this pursuit, but enhanced the value of the pearl in England up to six fold, by some scholarly estimates, over the first 60 years in the 16th century due in part to the fact that the Queen literally wore thousands of them herself. Many of her most opulent outfits, appearing in numerous royal portraits of Elizabeth I, feature thousands of this precious gemstone. During Elizabeth's reign, England regularly imported pearls by the shipload from countries like Morocco, Persia, and China. The imagery and symbolism of the pearl in England is associated with purity, chastity, and even, as the description for the ocular disease cataracts, which Shakespeare alludes to in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Rape of Lucrece. Our guest this week is Saoirse Laarachi, a PhD candidate with the Shakespeare Institute, and author of Pearls: Trade, Beauty and North Africa for Medieval and Early Modern Orients. She joins us today to share the history of pearls in Shakspeare's lifetime to discuss their use in general fashion, their purpose in international trade agreements, and what we should understand about Pearls from the Orient, specifically, when we find these references in Shakespeare's plays.
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod.
Episode Topic: Shakespeare and Community: Emerging VoicesShakespeare remains the world's most produced and studied playwright. However, these pursuits have disenfranchised significant segments of society by perpetuating a cultural elitism that belies the notion of accessibility inherent in his works. In the 20th century, a movement of programs, designed with and for the incarcerated, the differently abled, and those disadvantaged by socio-economic factors (to name a few), explore Shakespeare through their unique lived experience. “Shakespeare and Community” highlights these practices through a series of panel discussions, providing a reflective space wherein the larger community can gain a broader understanding of who Shakespeare “is” and “can be” in the context of a rapidly changing culture.Featured Speakers: Rowan Mackenzie, Artistic Director, Shakespeare UnBardFlorence March, Professor in Renaissance and Restoration Drama, University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier (France); Director of the Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-Classical Age, and the Enlightenment (IRCL), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Université Paul-Valéry; Co-Editor-in-Chief, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance StudiesJanice Valls-Russell, Principal Research Associate, France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-Classical Age, and the Enlightenment (IRCL), Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier (France)Abigail Rokison-Woodall, Lecturer in Shakespeare and Theatre, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham Scott Jackson, Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Director, University of Notre DameRead this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: go.nd.edu/9a5767. This podcast is a part of the London Book Club ThinkND Series titled “London Shakespeare Lecture 10th Anniversary Series”.
Episode 248."The Suicide Squad"Actor: Lynne Ashe.Lynne Ashe is a Georgia-born character actress known for playing quirky characters with big personalities. Classically trained in Shakespearean and British Restoration theatre, Lynne was primarily a stage actress until 2011, when she was approached by a stage director she'd formerly worked with asking her to audition for a film he'd written. She landed a supporting role in “Crackerjack” and thus began her screen career.Lynne was one of the first two graduates of the nationally acclaimed theatre program known as the Gainesville Theatre Alliance, a joint program between UNG and Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia. Her graduate studies (in Theatre) were at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, where she studied under the tutelage of James Dodding and thereby fell in love with Shakespeare and Restoration Theatre. Through Wake Forest, she obtained a grant to study for a summer in Stratford-upon-Avon with the Shakespeare Institute and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.Lynne is also a writer (poet, playwright and screenwriter) and jewelry artisan, selling her hand-make jewelry under the name “Ashelyn Designs” on Etsy.Lynne finds it ironic that the southern dialect she strove so hard to overcome/neutralize during her high school and college theatre training was the very thing that helped land her first few screen roles. She had to re-train an accent she'd formerly tried to restrain.Lynne is an advocate for raising awareness about an adipose-tissue and lymphatic disorder known as Lipedema, which primarily affects women, a condition which causes the body to create a type of fat on the lower half of the body which cannot be metabolized.Instagram: Monday Morning Critic Podcast.Facebook: Monday Morning Critic Podcast.Twitter: @DarekThomas or @mdmcriticWebsite: www.mmcpodcast.comContact: Mondaymorningcritic@gmail.com
Thomas Dabbs speaks with Tiffany Stern of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. The Shakespeare Institute is located in Stratford-upon-Avon and has become a beacon of scholarship in studies of Shakespearean performance and texts. In this talk, Professor Stern's work on Shakespearean performance and documents are discussed along with how Shakespearean drama related to the common person in Elizabethan London and in England during Shakespeare's time. Stern also talks about her forthcoming work on fairgrounds during the Shakespearean period and on broadside ballads and how popular songs appear throughout Shakespeare's plays. Stern also describes her work as a general editor of plays in the Arden Shakespeare series.SEGMENTS:0:00:00 - Intro and greetings0:02:54 - Summary of Tiffany Stern's research0:14:23 - The Shakespeare Institute0:19:06 - Fairgrounds and Shakespeare0:30:50 - Broadside Ballads0:36:54 - The art of insult, the 4th wall audience response0:45:25 - Shakespeare beyond Performance0:54:58 - Textual Editing, Arden, Hard Copy vs Digital1:04:29 - Shakespearean adaption: Novels, Manga, Anime1:07:12 - Beyond performance. beyond text, clowns1:13:50 - Closing remarks, recent scholarship, chronologyTOPICS:#shakespeare#shakespeareantheatre#shakespeareanperformance#shakespearescontemporaries#editingshakespeare#renaissancedrama#earlymoderndrama#digitalhumanities#teachingshakespeare
Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, telling the story of one of history's most famous events. In this tense political thriller, the Roman senator Brutus must decide whether to assassinate the powerful military general Julius Caesar in order to save Roman Republic — and the audience must decide whether Brutus made the right choice. In this course, you'll learn how Shakespeare dramatized the historical event of Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE, and particularly how he linked refined political rhetoric, aspiration toward Roman ideals, and acts of savage violence. You'll also hear the play's key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham. Professor Dobson discusses the Roman history behind Julius Caesar and the cultural role of classical Rome during the Renaissance, when Shakespeare was writing. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most popular romantic comedies. At the same time, it's a play that explores the darker and more dangerous side of love. Four young lovers flee into the forest where their romantic entanglements become even more entangled thanks to the magic of the fairy king, Oberon — who also puts a spell on his wife, Titania, so she falls in love with Bottom, a man with an enchanted donkey's head. In this course, you'll learn the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream, discover how the play's fantastical elements actually represent universal issues in our everyday lives, and hear the play's key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 1, you'll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Tiffany Stern, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the Shakespeare Institute. Professor Stern discusses the play's context, structure, and distinctive mix of comedy and tragedy, as created by the “play-within-a-play” — the “tragic” story of Pyramus and Thisbe performed by one group of characters to celebrate the others' weddings. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean.
Our last two scripts -- William Shakespeare's Long Lost First Play (abridged) and Hamlet's Big Adventure! (a prequel) -- have been written largely in iambic pentameter, and this week we talk to lecturer and playwright Richard O'Brien (who, as his very helpful Twitter handle @NotRockyHorror explains, is not the author of that legendary classic) about what that all means. Featuring essential differences between poets and dramatists; the only problem with doing a surprisingly good Fletcher impression; how formal poetic structure can deepen character; how verse pulls off the wonderful double act of lending gravitas and making jokes land; showing off the precision and pyrotechnics of language; the floated possibility of guest lecturing (let’s make this happen, Shakespeare Institute!); and how one of the pleasures of writing (and watching) verse plays is how much they resemble musicals (but without the expense and difficulty of getting them on). (Length 21:08) The post Writing Like Shakespeare appeared first on Reduced Shakespeare Company.
On this Learesque episode of Oeuvre Busters, Liam and George welcome Jessica Chiba to discuss Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985), starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu and Mieko Harada. We recorded this episode a few months back and were going to release it a little later, but Ran is currently on Amazon Prime, so what better time to celebrate this film than now? Topics discussed: must we mean what we say?; the purpose of fools; utter hopelessness; love. Plus, we briefly imagine what an Akira Kurosawa Shakespearean comedy might look like.Topics not discussed: The films of Alexander Kluge. Sign. Maybe one day . . .Dr. Jessica Chiba is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute. More about her fascinating research on Shakespeare, philosophy and translation (and untranslatability!) can be found here: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/edacs/departments/shakespeare/staff/profile.aspx?ReferenceId=179549 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Today I am talking to Micah Coston, an associate consultant at Perrett Lever, the leading international executive search firm that brings together diverse and visionary leaders to mission-driven sectors worldwide. Micah has had a varied career path that started in music, moved on to the dramatic performance arts, then travelled through research and now is developing through his consultancy work. We discuss how the seemingly disparate aspects of Micah's experience come together in propelling forward his constantly evolving and exciting career.Micah is a Consultant at the executive search firm, Perrett Laver in London. He lives in a thatched cottage in the Oxfordshire countryside and can be found wandering the footpaths near his village. Micah holds a BMus in Church Music (Voice); an MA in Performance Studies; an MA in Shakespeare Studies with Distinction, The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham; and a DPhil in English Literature, University of Oxford. Instagram: @micahcoston Twitter: @micahcoston
ABIGAIL ROKISON-WOODALL Abigail began her career as a professional actor, training at LAMDA. She completed her PhD at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University in 2006 after which she became a lecturer in Drama and English in the Education Faculty in Cambridge. In January 2013 she became Lecturer in Shakespeare and Theatre at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. Abigail has written a number of journal articles and chapters on Shakespeare and other drama. Her first monograph, Shakespearean Verse Speaking, was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press, and won the inaugural Shakespeare's Globe first book award. She has published three more books - Shakespeare for Young People: Productions, Versions and Adaptations (Bloomsbury Arden, 2013) and Shakespeare in the Theatre: Nicholas Hytner (Bloomsbury Arden, 2017) and As You Like It: Language and Writing (Bloomsbury Arden, 2021). She is the co-general editor with Michael Dobson and Simon Russell Beale of The Arden Shakespeare Performance Editions for which she has edited A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet and is currently editing King Lear. She is also co-general editor of the Arden Shakespeare in Performance A Practical Guide series, for which she is co-writing Shakespeare and Lecoq. She is currently working with RSC Education on a project about teaching Shakespeare to D/deaf children.Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=EKHEKXBAZBQG6¤cy_code=GBP)
Why are Shakespeare plays filled with songs – not all of them relevant to the story? In this 10-Minute Talk, Tiffany Stern discusses sales of printed songtexts in Shakespeare's London. She asks whether songs performed in, about or after plays were ‘product placement' for theatre sales.Speaker: Professor Tiffany Stern FBA, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare Institute, University of BirminghamImage: Performance at the Globe Theatre © Leon Neal / AFP / Getty ImagesTranscript: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/podcasts/10-minute-talks-theatre-marketing-and-ballads-in-the-time-of-shakespeare
Today's conversation is with one of my closest friends Jess Southwood. Unlike my other guests who work in the realm of spirituality, Jess is a Business consultant and facilitator, with a particular focus on leadership development, team dynamics and creativity in business. But honestly, I didn't invite her to talk to me about her work, though it is fascinating and has taken her all over the world. I didn't invite Jess to talk because she loves yoga and writing and poetry. I invited Jess here because we share something in common—we are both bereaved mothers. We “met” in 2009, after our second daughters were stillborn. I wanted to talk to Jess about sisterhood, spiritual bonding, emotional intimacy, grieving publicly, and you know, dead babies. We say that quite a bit in this episode. We talk about it bluntly, like you find in the community of grieving women on the internet. There is a whole community. Most people who have never lost a child have no idea there is a corner of the internet where women talk about the death of their baby—over and over again. We write stories and exchange emails and have an entire community of bereaved mothers and fathers. Jess is an extraordinary woman. I feel so blessed to have her as one of my best friends. As you can hear from our conversation, she is deeply thoughtful, funny, intelligent, self-aware and interesting. Jess' s first collection of poetry can be found at littlelosses.com. She has a Masters degree in Shakespeare Studies from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She lives in Birmingham, UK, with her husband, three children, two cats, one dog, and too many books. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Jess Southwood. My grief blog: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com Jess's first poetry collection: https://littlelosses.com/ Glow in the Woods: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/ We mentioned a few things in this podcast including the Right Where I Am Project. First year: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com/p/right-where-i-am-project.html Last year I did this: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com/2014/07/right-where-i-am-five-years-and-almost.html The Mutter Museum http://muttermuseum.org/ Kate Inglis who coined the term Babyloss's writing: http://www.kateinglis.com/ Kara Chipoletti Jones https://linktr.ee/griefandcreativity Niobe and Dead Baby Jokes: her blog Niobe's GITW posts: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/blog/tag/Niobe Angie's GITW posts: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/blog/tag/Angie Jess's GITW posts: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/blog/tag/Jess --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angie-yingst/message
More than six million people watched the first episode of series five of the BBC’s Peaky Blinders – the mesmerising drama of violence, moody characters and intrigue. Among them was internationally recognised Shakespeare expert Professor Ewan Fernie of the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham, Director of the high profile ‘Everything to Everybody’ project to unlock the city’s Shakespeare Memorial Library. Professor Fernie tells the publisher of History West Midlands he found himself seeing strong parallels with Shakespeare’s masterpiece – Macbeth. Keywords: Shakespeare, Peaky Blinders, Macbeth, Professor Ewan Fernie
Kate relocated to Los Angeles, where her aim is to connect and empower women to live out their extraordinary destinies. An experienced writer, speaker, teacher, actress, and musician, she is passionate about inspiring women to turn their hopes and dreams into reality. Founder of www.shakespeare.ink (FB: @www.Shakespeare.Ink), a copywriting/marketing business, she believes in the power of words to bring one’s essence to life. A word-lover and storyteller, Kate believes in the power of story to embrace, release and fuel one’s destiny. Her motto is: When dreams come, make them true. Kate holds a graduate fellowship from Harvard University, two Masters, and has studied at LAMDA. Despite obstacles, including overcoming Lyme, Kate has seen, time and again, extraordinary things happen when passions match pursuit. She is also a Shakespearean teacher, actress and consultant. Her first master’s on Ophelia led to an English literature graduate fellowship at Harvard. The English-Speaking Union selected Kate as one of 18 teachers nationally to study at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. She’s since studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and at the Shakespeare Institute, for her second MA. From impacting thousands of students across the world, to supporting her friends and family, Kate believes dreams can come true. We can walk them out with powerful grace, beauty and truth. I am so excited to be supporting you all and connecting! I love my family, spending time at the beach, exploring LA, making meaningful connections and building community with fellow women of vision! I believe our destinies begin with the story within. But, it takes a tribe of visionaries and do-ers for us all to grow and succeed.
To kick off Season 2 of the ComposerDad Podcast, we find ComposerDad and the family in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England where ProfessorMom is studying Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute. After a whole year of “intense compositional challenges” from BIBLE, will ComposerDad be able to tackle one from….Animatronic Shakespeare?!?This episode’s challenge is to “write a song about all the things Shakespeare HASN’T done.” If you want to help think up ideas to add to this song, ask a grownup to help you send a note to ComposerDad at www.ComposerDad.com.Special thanks to our guest this episode, the-child-formerly-known-as-SquishyBaby, AlvinBoy!Grownups, would you like to encourage more ComposerDad podcast episodes? Become a ComposerDad patron at www.patreon.com/composerdad and you could even issue your own intense compositional challenge!Also, did you hear WalterBoy telling you about this podcast he likes? It's called What If World featuring Mr. Eric. What If World is awesome. Subscribe to Mr. Eric's podcast and if you like it, become a patron on his Patreon page, like us! We met through Kids Listen, a fantastic community we are both a part of. It's one big happy kids podcasting family over there. Subscribe to the ComposerDad podcast and you can hear the final song from this challenge on the next episode! AND catch upcoming challenges this season from BIBLE, Shakespeare, a talking black hole, the Amalgamated Network of Parents, and who knows!?!The ComposerDad Podcast and YouTube Channel features music and adventure stories for families. We learn about music, emotions, the Bible, Shakespeare, nature, history, we solve problems creatively, and make a lot of silly sounds.
In her career, Susan looked after the libraries of the Shakespeare Institute and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. She discusses these fantastic collections and describes some of her experiences. --------------- You can subscribe to ShakenBakeCast on iTunes at tinyurl.com/y9543wku Follow me on Twitter at @ShakenBakeMHS.
Sixteenth-century theater companies used a variety of physical and sensual staging effects in their productions to create a full-body experience for playgoers: fireworks hissing and shooting across the stage, fake blood, fake body parts, the smell of blood and death, and more. Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern are the editors of a 2013 collection of essays, Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance, written by themselves and nine other theater historians. Tiffany Stern is a Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama with the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon. Farah Karim-Cooper is Head of Higher Education and Research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Tiffany and Farah are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published December 13, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, Awake Your Senses, was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had production help from Cathy Devlin and Dom Boucher at the Sound Company in London and Paul Luke and Andrew Feliciano at at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.
[vc_row full_width="stretch_row" content_placement="top" equal_height="yes" parallax="content-moving-fade" slider_images="12004" slider_animation="fadeZoom" overlay_color="rgba(0,0,0,0.2)" css=".vc_custom_1512315432253{background-position: center;background-repeat: no-repeat;background-size: contain !important;}" anchor_link="top"][vc_column width="2/3" offset="vc_col-lg-offset-2"][rowshape type="rowshape_4" position="bottom" height="30" color="#2b272c"][rowshape type="rowshape_4" position="bottom" height="50" color="rgba(166,115,81,0.6)"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width="stretch_row" anchor_link="intro" css=".vc_custom_1451644722488{padding-top: 60px !important;padding-bottom: 100px !important;}"][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="15px"][vc_column_text]Director of the Shakespeare Institute Michael Dobson talks about the history and current work of the Institute, and reveals the genius (and truth) of location location location; how he ensures Shakespeare academics also experience and practice Shakespeare in performance; the decision to delve; a fascination with Shakespeare in languages other than English; the process of applying to the Institute; new Arden editions; advice from both Sir Stanley Wells and Dr. Peter Holland; and finally, the secrets of where to get the best actors to portray a revolting mob. (Length 23:08)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Shakespeare's depiction of religion and clerics is discussed by the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, Ewan Fernie from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham and presenter Rana Mitter. Highlights of a discussion recorded at Imperial College as part of a series exploring different professions and vocations in Shakespeare's work.Producer: Zahid Warley
In 2004, the Financial Times critic Alastair Macaulay argued that the role of Othello had been “diminished” by the late twentieth century convention of having only black actors play the part. The threshold for Macaulay had been what he perceived to be another poor performance as Othello. Yet since Paul Robeson’s appearance as Othello at the Savoy Theatre in 1930, language has been a major weapon of critics and journalists opposing ethnic minority performers’ appearances in Shakespearean theatre. This paper examines critical responses by arts journalists and critics to these performances, helping to contextualize discriminatory casting patterns in contemporary theatre as part of a larger discourse guided by the media. Bio: Dr. Jami Rogers trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and holds an MA and a PhD from the Shakespeare Institute, the University of Birmingham. Prior to obtaining her PhD Jami spent 10 years working for PBS, the American public service broadcast television network, first at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. and then for 8 years at WGBH/Boston working on Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery!, where awards included a Primetime Emmy from the Academy of Arts and Television Sciences. Most recently she was Research Assistant on the AHRC-funded Multicultural Shakespeare project at the University of Warwick, where she was the lead researcher on the British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database. She was Visiting Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton in the Drama Department and has taught at the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick and the British American Drama Academy. Jami has lectured on Shakespeare and American drama at the National Theatre in London and works regularly with director David Thacker at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton.
Join Dr. Carlos as he discusses who really shakespeares work. Amelia Bassano was born in 1569 into a family of Venetian Jews who were court musicians to Queen Elizabeth I. At about the age of thirteen, she became mistress to the fifty-six-year-old Lord Hunsdon, Henry VIII's reputed son by Mary Boleyn. As Lord Chamberlain, Hunsdon was in charge of the English theater and would become the patron of the company that performed the Shakespearean plays. Amelia lived with him for a decade, during which time she also had an affair with the playwright Christopher Marlowe. When she became pregnant, Amelia was exiled from court and next surfaces as the mysterious 'dark lady' in Shakespeare's sonnets. At the age of forty-two, she became the first woman to publish a book of original poetry, employing linguistic features resembling the later Shakespearean plays. Amelia died in poverty in 1645. Drawing upon a wealth of documentary evidence, this controversial and provocative book unites Tudor history, feminism, and Shakespeare scholarship to demonstrate that Amelia Bassano was in all the right places and had all the right knowledge, skills, and contacts to have produced the Shakespearean canon.John Hudson is a Shakespeare director. He received a First from the University of Exeter and a graduate degree with merit in Shakespeare and Theatre from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. He teaches advanced and experimental Shakespeare to actors at H. B. Studios, and directs one of the world's most innovative Shakespeare companies, the Dark Lady Players, in New York City.
For the tenth and final episode of this series of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “How did Shakespeare get so popular?”. This is a good question, and a lot of people wonder why it is Shakespeare that is so well celebrated over his fellow playwrights. In this episode we looks at lots of reasons why this is the case, through key events and opportunities over the last 400 years that have led to his popularity today. This is such a big topic that this episode really acts and an introduction to further areas you might want to look up. Our experts also express beautifully how and why they enjoy seeing Shakespeare’s plays over and over again. This weeks guests are: * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge at the SBT * Ben Crystal, Actor, director and producer You can find the show notes for this episode on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/how-did-shakespeare-get-so-popular/
For the ninth episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “How Did Shakespeare Die?”. We have found ourselves at the end of Shakespeare's life, and with most questions we asked, we don't know the answer to this one for sure. What we do know is when he died and where he is buried, but there is no recorded evidence of what killed him. There are however rumours and stories surrounding his death and in this episode we look at these and other evidence about what his death would have been like. This weeks guests are: * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Dr Robert Bearman, Retired Head of Archives and Local Studies, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust * Dr Tara Hamling, University of Birmingham Show notes for this episode can be found over on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/how-did-shakespeare-die/
For the eighth episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “How much was Shakespeare Worth?”. Most of the documents the survive about Shakespeare life detail his business and financial dealings. In this episode we looks at what these documents can tell us about Shakespeare worth at different points in his life, as well as where he got this money and what happened to it. Exemplification of a fine showing Shakespeare's purchase of New Place Exemplification of a fine showing Shakespeare’s purchase of New Place This weeks guests are: * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Dr Robert Bearman, Retired Head of Archives and Local Studies, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust * Dr Tara Hamling, University of Birmingham Find the show notes for this episode at: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/how-much-was-shakespeare-worth/
For the seventh episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “Was Shakespeare Gay?”. This is a really big question that people have written a great deal about, so this episode acts as a sort of summary of some of the arguments for and against Shakespeare being gay. To answer this question we have to think about the nature of friendships and sexuality and self identification of those thing in Shakespeare time, as well as looking at evidence from this text, in particular the sonnets. This weeks guests are: * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Greg Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre You can find the show notes for this episode over on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/was-shakespeare-gay/
For the sixth episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “Did Shakespeare know Queen Elizabeth 1?”. This is something that people love to imagine, that these two icons of British culture could have had a relationship, and in this episode we look at Shakespeare's royal patronage, performance's at court and whether or not anyone could really have had a relationship with a monarch at all. Ye Bard - hys Birth… ye immortal bard cometh to town - ergo, he is Born in ye merrie town of Stratford, A. D. 1564, c1850, by unknown author Ye Bard - hys Birth… ye immortal bard cometh to town - ergo, he is Born in ye merrie town of Stratford, A. D. 1564, c1850, by unknown author This weeks guests are: * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Dr Anjna Chouhan, Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at the SBT - * Ben Crystal, Actor Director and producer You can find the shownotes for this episode over on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/did-shakespeare-know-queen-elizabeth-i/
For the fifth episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “Where did Shakespeare Live?”. To answer this question we must look at three differnt periods in his life: his youth, his life in London and his married and family life. In this episode I talk to our guests about the different properties we know Shakespeare lived in, which ones he owned and when he bought them, and we also look at what life would have been like living in these very different properties, both for Shakespeare and his housemates. This weeks guests are: * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Ben Crystal, Actor and Producer * Dr Tara Hamling, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern history at Birmingham University * Dr Paul Edmonson, Head of Research and Knowledge at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust You can find the accompanying show notes for this podcast over on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/where-did-shakespeare-live/
For the fourth episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “How did actors learn their lines?”. If you were an actor in the Kings Men, your rehearsal process would have been very different from todays! In this episode I talk to my guests about cure scripts, rehearsal time, where acting companies got their costumes and sets, and who exactly would have done to the theatre. This weeks guests include: Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT Dr Anjna Chouhan, Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at the SBT Ben Crystal, Actor Director and producer You can find show notes for today's episode over on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/how-did-actors-learn-their-lines/
For the third episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “When Did Shakespeare Go to London?”. There are some lost years in Shakespeare's life, one of which is the period from around 1585 until 1592 when the first reference to him as a playwright appears in print. In this episode I talk to our guests about all the myths and stories that are told around why Shakespeare set out for London, we talk about how he would have travelled and where he would have stayed, but the idea of him as a "literary commuter", travelling between London and Stratford for most of his life. This 1697 map of London Bridge by John Norden shows how London Bridge would have looked when Shakespeare made his way across the river from his lodgings on silver street to the playhouses This weeks guests are: * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT * Dr Anjna Chouhan, Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at the SBT * Dr Tara Hamling, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern history at Birmingham University * Madeleine Cox, Reading Room and Public Services Coordinator at the SBT You can find the show notes for this episode on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/when-did-shakespeare-go-london/
Episode two of Let's Talk Shakespeare from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. In the second episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “Did Shakespeare love his wife?”. This question has tantalised for years, we have so frustrating little evidence of their relationship, in truth all we know for certain is that they married, had three children, and stayed married until William's death in 1616. In this weeks podcast we discuss how they may have met, the unusual circumstances in which they married, what Williams prolonged absence from his family while he was in London may have meant for his wife and children, and of course the frustratingly vague reference to his wife in his will. This weeks guests on the podcast are: Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT Dr Tara Hamling, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern history at Birmingham University Ben Crystal, actor, writer and producer You can find the show notes for this episode on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/did-shakespeare-love-his-wife/
For the first episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “Was Shakespeare Educated?”. This is a really interesting question that we are asked regularly and one that have to pull on lots of different sources of information to get an answer. In this episode we discuss how we know that Shakespeare went to school, where he went, what his school day would have been like and what he learned. We also think about Shakespeare and continued learner and the evidence of this in his work. Keep you ears open for a reference to Terry Pratchett! This weeks guests are: * Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT * Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute * Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT * Dr Anjna Chouhan, Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at the SBT * Dr Tara Hamling, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern history at Birmingham University * Madeleine Cox, Reading Room and Public Services Coordinator at the SBT You can find show notes for this episode over on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/was-shakespeare-educated/
"I, that am rudely stamped..." (Richard III, 1.1.16) Shakespeare not only talked about his own times; he also wrote history plays that showed us the past—though it was a past filtered through the politics and prejudices of Shakespeare's present. Questions about this came up recently when a body was found in a Leicester, England, parking lot. That body is now widely believed to be that of King Richard III. Among the many issues raised, along with that body, are questions about who the real Richard III was, versus the dramatic character that we've all come to know from stage and film. In search of that answer, Rebecca Sheir, host of our Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks with an expert on the historic Richard III, David Baldwin, and an expert on Shakespeare's Richard III, Michael Dobson. Meanwhile, historian Retha Warnicke explains the practical challenges of any research into Richard's long-ago time. David Baldwin is a medieval historian who has taught at the Universities of Leicester and Nottingham. His book "Richard III" was published by Amberley in 2012. Michael Dobson is Director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham in England. Retha Warnicke is Professor of History at Arizona State University. ----------------- From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. Produced for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Richard Paul; Garland Scott, associate producer. Edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Thanks to Hannah Tucker at the University of Leicester for her help.
"Under the greenwood tree / Who loves to lie with me / And turn his merry note / Unto the sweet bird’s throat, / Come hither, come hither, come hither. / Here shall he see / No enemy / But winter and rough weather." (As You Like It, 2.5.1-8) Pack the picnic basket. Grab a blanket. Don't forget the bug spray. Shakespeare under the stars is a long-standing tradition in America—and elsewhere in the English-speaking world and beyond. Rebecca Sheir, host of our Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks with scholars and theater artists about the social and cultural forces that came together to create outdoor Shakepeare festivals. (Hint: The tradition starts a lot sooner than you might think!) Among those featured in this podcast: - Libby Appel is former Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. - Charlotte Canning is a professor in the theater and dance department of the University of Texas at Austin. - Michael Dobson is director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham in England. - Frank Hildy is a professor of theater at the University of Maryland. - Scott Kaiser is the head of voice and text at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. ----------------------- From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. Produced for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Richard Paul; Garland Scott, associate producer. Edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. We had help gathering material for this Shakespeare Unlimited episode from Esther French. Thanks to Nick Moorbath at Evolution Studios in Oxford England and Eddie Wallace at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The music was composed and arranged by Lenny Williams.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Written in around 1610, it is thought to be one of the playwright's final works and contains some of the most poetic and memorable passages in all his output. It was influenced by accounts of distant lands written by contemporary explorers, and by the complex international politics of the early Jacobean age. The Tempest is set entirely on an unnamed island inhabited by the magician Prospero, his daughter Miranda and the monstrous Caliban, one of the most intriguing characters in Shakespeare's output. Its themes include magic and the nature of theatre itself - and some modern critics have seen it as an early meditation on the ethics of colonialism. With: Jonathan Bate Provost of Worcester College, Oxford Erin Sullivan Lecturer and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham Katherine Duncan-Jones Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford Producer: Thomas Morris.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Written in around 1610, it is thought to be one of the playwright's final works and contains some of the most poetic and memorable passages in all his output. It was influenced by accounts of distant lands written by contemporary explorers, and by the complex international politics of the early Jacobean age. The Tempest is set entirely on an unnamed island inhabited by the magician Prospero, his daughter Miranda and the monstrous Caliban, one of the most intriguing characters in Shakespeare's output. Its themes include magic and the nature of theatre itself - and some modern critics have seen it as an early meditation on the ethics of colonialism. With: Jonathan Bate Provost of Worcester College, Oxford Erin Sullivan Lecturer and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham Katherine Duncan-Jones Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford Producer: Thomas Morris.
With Mark Lawson. Conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner discusses his fascination with Bach as he prepares to lead a nine hour marathon of the composer's work at the Royal Albert Hall. In mid-rehearsal, Gardiner explains his attempt to convey the rock and roll of Bach. He also talks about his forthcoming 70th birthday, working with apprentices and the music that saps his energy. Jack the Giant Slayer stars Nicholas Hoult as Jack, a young farm hand who must enter the land of the giants to rescue Princess Isabelle - in an adventure merging two fairy tales, Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant Killer. Sarah Crompton discusses whether this fantasy adventure from X-Men director Bryan Singer hits the mark. The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford has become a licensed wedding venue - couples can now take to the stage and tie in the knot in the Swan Theatre. Professor Michael Dobson, director of the Shakespeare Institute, discusses Shakespeare's attitude to marriage and the weddings in his plays, from Beatrice and Benedick's union in Much Ado About Nothing to Kate's long wait for her groom in The Taming of the Shrew. On the eve of Philip Roth's 80th birthday, another chance to hear part of a rare interview from 2011: the full interview is available on the Front Row website. Producer Claire Bartleet.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Robert Burton's masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy.In 1621 the priest and scholar Robert Burton published a book quite unlike any other. The Anatomy of Melancholy brings together almost two thousand years of scholarship, from Ancient Greek philosophy to seventeenth-century medicine. Melancholy, a condition believed to be caused by an imbalance of the body's four humours, was characterised by despondency, depression and inactivity. Burton himself suffered from it, and resolved to compile an authoritative work of scholarship on the malady, drawing on all relevant sources.Despite its subject matter the Anatomy is an entertaining work, described by Samuel Johnson as the only book 'that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.' It also offers a fascinating insight into seventeenth-century medical theory, and influenced many generations of playwrights and poets.With:Julie SandersProfessor of English Literature and Drama at the University of NottinghamMary Ann LundLecturer in English at the University of LeicesterErin SullivanLecturer and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.Producer: Thomas Morris.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Robert Burton's masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy.In 1621 the priest and scholar Robert Burton published a book quite unlike any other. The Anatomy of Melancholy brings together almost two thousand years of scholarship, from Ancient Greek philosophy to seventeenth-century medicine. Melancholy, a condition believed to be caused by an imbalance of the body's four humours, was characterised by despondency, depression and inactivity. Burton himself suffered from it, and resolved to compile an authoritative work of scholarship on the malady, drawing on all relevant sources.Despite its subject matter the Anatomy is an entertaining work, described by Samuel Johnson as the only book 'that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.' It also offers a fascinating insight into seventeenth-century medical theory, and influenced many generations of playwrights and poets.With:Julie SandersProfessor of English Literature and Drama at the University of NottinghamMary Ann LundLecturer in English at the University of LeicesterErin SullivanLecturer and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.Producer: Thomas Morris.