Blogging Shakespeare

There will be two Global Gatherings in Stratford this weekend.  One will take place at Long Marston Airfield, and will feature Dizzee Rascal, Faithless and Paul Oakendfold, and the other will happen just steps away from Shakespeare’s birthplace. As I write, school teachers from Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Hong Kong, India, Latvia, Malta, […]

This post is part of our Shakespeare’s Women series in parternship with the collections team over at Finding Shakespeare. On flickr we have created a collection portraying these wonderful ladies. In my mind’s eye, Ophelia is always drowning. She is garlanded with flowers, she is singing, and she is drowning.  ‘Long it could not be’, […]

I’ve been putting together a programme called ‘At the Mermaid Tavern’ to be performed this coming Sunday, 1 August, as part of the Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival, which is directed by Paul Edmondson for The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. This is the festival’s 57th year, and I came to Stratford in 1958, so I must have been […]

The Shakespeare Bookshop was pleased to have had a work experience student from King Edward VI, Amardeep Dhillon, who volunteered two days of his time to see how the shop is run. Amar was an asset to the shop during his time with us, and was most helpful with running the book stall during the […]

This week I have been busy expanding my knowledge of the world wide web and I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about some of other the ways you can engage with us on line. We have a Facebook fan page where you can follow our updates but more interestingly you can […]

Actors Mariah Gale, Richard Griffiths, Greg Hicks, and Jane Lapotaire were waiting in the wings. I entered a full Queen Elizabeth Hall to welcome people to the Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival and last night’s programme, Candles in the Wind (devised by Roger Pringle). By supporting it, we were using our liberty to help other people gain […]

“You can play it standing, sitting, lying down, or, if you insist, kneeling.  You can have a hangover. You can be cold-sober. You can be hungry, overfed, or have just fought with your wife.”  (Gene Fowler) I’m sure that Rory Kinnear (who is playing Hamlet at The National Theatre from September) will take comfort from […]

I’ve had a letter complaining that scholars are not doing enough to fight the arguments that Shakespeare didn’t write his own works. The letter was provoked partly by news of the forthcoming film Anonymous which I gather supports the authorship claims of the Earl of Oxford as well as propounding other ridiculous ideas such as […]

I have recently been exploring the world of twitter so look out for my tweets on behalf of the Birthplace Trust – or even better send me a tweet. Anyway, yesterday I saw a tweet that made me think and it went something like this… “How short is a story?” This got me thinking about […]

For a wide-eyed textual novice like myself, last Friday’s panel on Arden’s edition of Double Falsehood had mouth-watering appeal before it even began. Wells, Hammond, Doran – a distinguished panel indeed. But, when Professor Richard Proudfoot unexpectedly entered the room to join the discussion, the bar of expectation, already set above any reasonable level, was […]