Blogging Shakespeare

Kiernan Ryan and Ewan Fernie in  conversation. We are happy to share CUP’s recording of Ewan Fernie’s and Kiernan Ryan’s conversation on Shakespeare for Freedom. CUP states that: Shakespeare for Freedom presents a powerful, plausible and political argument for Shakespeare’s meaning and value. It ranges across the breadth of the Shakespeare phenomenon, offering a new interpretation not […]

Trumping Shakespeare: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and the Rise of the Clown Politician By Paul Hamilton (This post was originally published as part of the Kingston Shakespeare Seminars) In a May 26, 2016 Los Angeles Times article, entitled“The theater of Trump: What Shakespeare can teach us about the Donald”, theater critic Charles McNulty undergoes what […]

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   Macbeth: Leïla & Ben – A Bloody History, Artistes Productuers Associés, dir. Lotfi Achour, Northern Stage, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 13 July 2012 By Adam Hansen, University of Northumbria Ted […]

This post is part of Year of Shakespeare, a project documenting the World Shakespeare Festival, the greatest celebration of Shakespeare the world has ever seen.   On 12 June twenty-five academics, theatre practitioners, digital curators, and museums specialists gathered in London to discuss the Globe to Globe and World Shakespeare Festivals so far. We live tweeted […]

Continuing my series on Shakespeare’s sources I am going to take a brief look at Henry VIII. Henry VIII was a late play of Shakespeare’s and many think it was written in collaboration with John Fletcher. Typically it borrows heavily from Holinshed and in fact some people have suggested that the lack of interventions into […]

Continuing from last week’s blog about Henry IV part 1 and Henry’s crusade this week we move into the next play, Henry IV part 2, but keep an eye on the theme of crusades. Here we see Henry more established in his reign planning, quite cold heartedly to use the crusade as a way “to […]

Like most of Shakespeare’s plays, Henry IV has a number of different sources including  Holinshed’s Chronicles, Samuel Daniels’ The civil war between the houses of York and Lancaster and Machiavelli’s The Prince. But in this blog I am going to take a quick look at the idea of crusade and penance. At the very beginning […]