Blogging Shakespeare

This week I had a visit from Rakshpal Singh Sangha, who had made the long journey from India to deliver a number of translations of Shakespeare’s works for his friend Professor Jagdish Chander Joshi.  On behalf of Professor Joshi, Rakshpal presented our library with Hindi translations of ‘The Merchant of Venice’, ‘Julius Caesar’, and ‘As […]

I wrote in my previous blog about the factual evidence relating to Shakespeare’s acting career. There is also some anecdotal evidence, mostly suggesting that though he acted, he was not a star. John Aubrey, writing in the mid-seventeenth century, says that Shakespeare, ‘inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about 18: […]

In honor of Shakespeare’s birthday (last Saturday) I have been thinking about what Shakespeare means to me and here are some of my answers.. ..he means a job I love. Working for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust I have realised a number of ambitions and been involved with many interesting projects. No two days are the same here thanks to the […]

In my last blog, I considered how Good Friday influenced Shakespeare’s imagination. We are now properly in Eastertide (forty days from Easter Day) and it is not surprising that the Resurrection of Jesus (or ‘uprising’ as William Tyndale referred to it) made such a considerable impact on Shakespeare’s imagination. Shakespeare is not telling the Christian […]

Good Friday: the beginning of an extraordinary moment in the Christian calendar which remind us of the intense human drama that marked the end of Jesus’s earthly life: profound loneliness, desertion, denial, interrogation by state and religious officials, mockery, beating, and the most painful of deaths. Easter, and these events that lead up to it, […]

Ten Shakespearian conversation-openers with which to begin (or possibly sideline) a new relationship “Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?” (‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’, 2.1.114) “Sweet Saint, for charity be not so cursed” (‘Richard III’, 1.2.49) “What my dear Lady Disdain! Are yoo yet living?” (‘Much Ado About Nothing’, 1.1.112) “Say, what’s thy name? Thou hast […]

Last Lap for North-East Shakespeare Character Vote Moonlight, Magic and Wedding Bells By Christine Chapman (A Midsummer Night’s Dream/The Tempest) If the object of art is to give life a shape, then The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream must rank amongst Shakespeare’s most artful creations.  Focusing on magical transformation, these plays celebrating the shaping […]

The Stage is running a series of articles about Great Shakespeare Actors, mostly so far from the twentieth century. I suppose most people would think the first of all was Richard Burbage, who seems to have created many of Shakespeare’s greatest roles. But might it have been Shakespeare himself? There are conflicting views about the […]

Characters in contention for leading role in theatre Shakespeare tribute: Sad Stories of the Death of Kings (Richard II/Henry VI, Part III) ‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle/ This earth of majesty’. The words of John of Gaunt in Richard II evoke romantic visions of a lost England: a demi-paradise surrounded by silver […]

Although I wasn’t up precisely with the lark this morning, I probably heard it.   I was due at New Place in time for an interview with BBC Coventry and Warwick. Our Dig for Shakespeare recommences and it was great to see our two lead archaeologists, Kevin Colls and Will Mitchell, from Birmingham Archaeology busily […]