Blogging Shakespeare

Every new edition of a Shakespeare play brings with it fresh insights, the work is dressed anew for our own times by a scholarly introduction, notes, and different emphases. It was a great pleasure to welcome Professor Rene Weis of University College London to The Shakespeare Centre yesterday to speak on his new edition of [...]

The great actor Sir Ian McKellen, who is also well-known as a gay activist, was recently quoted in the press as saying that Shakespeare himself was probably gay. Invited to comment on this, I pointed out that there was nothing new in the idea, which for a long time has been frequently expressed especially because [...]

For this first Shakespearience blog of the new year, let’s turn to the most famous speech in all drama. You’ll know which one I mean: To be, or not to be – that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms [...]

It’s not every actor who can speak poetry well. Daring to elevate heightened language so that it rises from the page somewhere between song and naturally spoken word is a risk that many actors choose to avoid. It is not part of drama school training and tends to be skill which is acquired gradually over [...]

We’ve had a lovely group of talented actors from Texas with us this week.  They have been participating in one of our ‘Shakespeare Text and Theatre’ courses, whilst also rehearsing and doing research in our archives.  As well as seeing and discussing the RSC’s repertoire, this group also had the chance to see a new [...]

When I think about prisoners in Shakespeare, two characters spring readily to mind: Richard II and Ariel in The Tempest. There many more examples: Malvolio is put into a dark room in Twelfth Night, or What You Will; Claudio and other customers from the brothel are imprisoned in Measure for Measure; King Lear and Cordelia [...]

I can’t help thinking of Shakespeare as a poet first and a playwright second. I know we all of us want Shakespeare to do both equally well, but I think first and foremost his mind and imagination were alive with poetic and rhetorical possibilities. The first time he breaks into print is with the long [...]