Blogging Shakespeare

On Sunday, after greeting Premier Wen of China on his private visit to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, I went to the Television Centre in Birmingham to do a short broadcast on the Middle Eastern network, Aljazeera English TV.  They wanted to interview me about the report that the Institute for Human Evolution in Johannesburg is [...]

Hello I am Tom de Freston the Leverhulme Artist in Residence at Cambridge University. I would like to tell you more about my work representing Shakespeare in Art. In 2010 I was commissioned to make a new body of paintings in response to the plays of Shakespeare. The paintings will be unveiled at the Cambridge [...]

This series on Shakespeare’s villains is being done in partnership with Finding Shakespeare – curating digital stories relating to Shakespeare’s life,  work and times.  Finding Shakespeare is the blog produced by the Collections Team here at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust– you can find out more about Iago  on Thursday 30th June  when they post their blog. [...]

I write this between events at the 58th Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival. In a couple of hours the Shakespeare Centre will be buzzing with the sound of local poets gathering to read their work to each other. This year there will be a special guest appearance from Roy Macfarlane, the Birmingham Poet Laureate. But last Friday, [...]

Premier Wen Jiabao begins UK visit at Shakespeare’s first home On Sunday 26 June, His Excellency Mr Wen Jiabao, Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, made a private visit to Shakespeare’s Birthplace.  Premier Wen, an avid Shakespeare enthusiast, chose to begin his three day visit to the UK, with a [...]

Last Tuesday, 21 June, Professor David Bevington spoke to a group of enthusiasts and students about his new book, Murder Most Foul, a cultural history of Shakespeare’s Hamlet through the ages, from the original sources right up to the interpretations given the play in the 21st century. It is because Hamlet presents us with such [...]

Earlier this year Declan Donnellan’s Cheek By Jowl company toured the UK with their production of The Tempest in Russian. The Edinburgh International Festival is bringing two Shakespeare plays to the UK in August, The Tempest in Korean and King Lear in Mandarin. Last year The Globe Theatre in London staged a season of Shakespeare’s [...]

The Ninth World Shakespeare Congress www.shakespeare2011.net is now less than a month away.  In the run-up to the event I am going to post a series of blogs from delegates from around the world who have been awarded travel grants by The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.  All of the grant winners have different stories to tell [...]

This series on Shakespeare’s villains is being done in partnership with Finding Shakespeare – curating digital stories relating to Shakespeare’s life,  work and times.  Finding Shakespeare is produced by the Collections Team here at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust– you can find out more about Shylock on Thursday 23rd when they post their blog. Shylock, a Jewish [...]