Blogging Shakespeare

Stanley Wells is busy writing a review of forthcoming biography of Ben Jonson. I asked Stanley what he thought… Ben Jonson SWW (mp3) Ben Jonson: A Life by Ian Donaldson is published by Oxford University Press on 20 October. You might like to purchase a copy from The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Bookshop by sending them […]

Continuing my series on Shakespeare’s sources,  this week I turn my attention to Othello. Like many of Shakespeare’s plays Othello actually has multiple sources but one of the main ones is an Italian story by Cinthio called  ‘Hecathommithi’. The story contains all the familiar elements of Othello – the innocent and loving wife, her husband […]

I’m currently finishing a big book, which is on the demonic in Shakespeare and other writers. But it’s always more fun to look forward to the next one, and I’m planning a new book called Shakespearience. It’ll be about the way Shakespeare’s writing bears on and indeed constitutes life. I want to get into the […]

‘Shakespeare (whom you and every playhouse bill Style the divine! the matchless! what you will), For gain, not glory, wing’d his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despite…’ Alexander Pope, 1737. Peter Thomson called ambiguity “a happy hunting ground for the critic” and ambiguity is still maintained by many around the life of […]

Last Wednesday, The Shakespeare Centre was pleased to welcome back one of our most popular speakers: Professor David Crystal. I can think of nobody else who knows more about the English Language than David. He is also a pioneer of Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation. He was here to speak to a packed audience about his […]

  Continuing my series on Shakespeare’s sources I turn my attention to one of my favorite plays The Tempest. The story of The Tempest was crafted by Shakespeare, but it is not without references to letters, documents and essays which were circulating at the time. In this way Shakespeare is being a bit like a […]

In the run-up to The Ninth World Shakespeare Congress in Prague I posted a selection of blogs from grant winners looking forward to that event. Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting a selection of blogs from some  more of those grant winners.  This week’s contribution comes from Tina Krontiris, who is […]

  In the run-up to The Ninth World Shakespeare Congress in Prague I posted a selection of blogs from grant winners looking forward to that event. Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting a selection of blogs from some  more of those grant winners.  This week’s contribution comes from Emma Firestone, who […]

Continuing my series on Shakespeare’s sources – this week we take a look at Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare ‘borrowed’ the plot of Romeo and Juliet from a story that was already traditional in many European countries and had recently been re-told in a long narrative poem by Arthur  Brooke. Although Brooke’s poem was very similar […]

William Shakespeare was an early developer, sexually. He married at eighteen, before he came of age, and at a time when the average age for men to marry in Stratford-upon-Avon was twenty-four. His case of pre-marital fornication (for that was the church’s view then) stands out prominently in the town’s records. Between 1570 and 1630 […]