Blogging Shakespeare

The undeniable spirit of New Orleans has infused our four days here with a beat all of its own. From our first evening when we took our eye-opening walk down Bourbon Street, to the photograph we had taken with an Uncle Sam lookalike outside the Maple Leaf jazz bar on Oak Street, and the magical, […]

Arrived in New Orleans the other night after 600 mile drive from an unexpected stop in the unexpectedly delightful St. Genevieve, MO. A gumbo dinner and good night’s sleep later and we’re enjoying coffee in high humidity. Amid the sweet, sticky madness of it all, I thought it might be grounding to make a list […]

‘Romeo loved Juliet Juliet she felt the same When he put his arms around her He said ‘Julie, baby, you’re my flame Thou giv-est fever when we kisseth Fever with the flaming youth Fever I’m afire Fever yea I burn for sooth’ Elvis Presley would have sung these lyrics about Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers hundreds of […]

As we leave the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival I look across Kansas City to the trees lying beyond the skyscrapers. The Winter’s Tale which we saw in Southmoreland Park feels like it is sending its city beat onto the road in front of us. We are at once driving away from and heading towards […]

We’ve had a terrific and enjoyably intense first full day, thanks in no small part to the orchestrative efforts of Artistic Director Sidonie Garrett, a force of nature and of culture, and someone who is bound to feature again on this site. We conducted fourteen interviews with people associated with the Heart of America Shakespeare […]

Colorado from the air looks like a state of enormous fields in which nothing much seems to happen. Mountains decorate the horizon, staring reproachfully at the well organised emptiness in front of them. We are finally on our way to Kansas City, only twenty-four hours later than planned and having travelled an extra 2,500 miles. […]

As we descended into Newark yesterday afternoon – blithely unaware that the forerunning tempests stirred by Hurricane Arthur had caused our connecting flight to be cancelled, and that we would spend the night not in Kansas City, as planned, but at the Kenilworth Inn, Kenilworth, New Jersey – our irrepressible attendant announced that we should […]

The 4th July is upon on us, and I’ve just landed in Kansas City for the start of Shakespeare on the Road, an epic road trip all around North America which aims to tell the story of the extraordinary phenomenon of the Shakespeare festival. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has teamed up with the University of […]

Most of Shakespeare’s aristocratic patrons would be intimately familiar with the arts of swordplay. Furthermore, Shakespeare as a trained actor would have studied fighting accurately to replicate it onstage. This is why Shakespeare takes many opportunities to mention duelling culture in his plays, especially within the comedies.  Shakespeare uses duel references to comic effect in […]