Blogging Shakespeare

Shakespeare in America? Shakespeare and Biography? Shakespeare and Material Culture? Or perhaps Shakespeare and Women? Or Shakespeare and Eastern Europe? Or Shakespeare’s Sonnets? Or perhaps Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres? Our free webinar, sponsored by Oxford University Press, is for everyone who loves Shakespeare and who is keen to find out more… Please join me for […]

Continuing a short series of video posts from international Shakespeare conferences, here’s Dr Nicoleta Cinpoes of the University of Worcester talking to me in Craiova during a warm day back in May. At the University of Worcestor she teaches Renaissance Literature, is Course Leader for English Literary Studies and is co-director of the Early Modern […]

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.   What did people make of Shakespeare’s role in the ‘Isles of Wonder’ Olympic Opening Ceremony last night? Here are some thoughts from Twitter – you can add your voice to […]

In just over a week, Stratford-upon-Avon will welcome the International Shakespeare Conference. It takes place every two years and is hosted by The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. With this in mind – and alongside the Olympics – I thought I’d run a short season of video posts of interviews taken during my visits to […]

I wanted so badly for it to be PERFECT – expected it would be after the BBC’s Richard II! – but oh dear, a miss is as good as a mile. Henry IV? YES. Hotspur & Kate? YES. Supporting cast? YES. Falstaff? Um… Hal? Er… Hal was great for the serious stuff (his showdown with […]

William Henry Schofield, an early 20th century scholar of comparative English literature, once said, “Shakepeare’s whole face was tanned by the sun of chivalry.” That may seem an odd statement – after all, we think of Shakespeare as a Renaissance playwright, not a medieval troubadour. There are no questing knights, Round Tables, or damsels locked […]

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.   ‘Re-Making Shakespeare’, Northern Stage, Newcastle, Saturday 14 July 2012. By Monika Smialkowska, University of Northumbria ‘Re-making Shakespeare’, co-organised by Northern Stage, the School of English at Newcastle University, and the RSC, […]

This is the actor’s eye view of the auditorium at the RST – imagine it full of people, the audience. There is a performance on the stage perhaps you are playing Valentine in The Two Gentleman of Verona, it is beginning of act five, scene four, you have just entered alone to do your soliloquy […]

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.   A Soldier in Every Son – ‘Chaos Comes to Establish a New Order’ By Leticia Garcia, University of California at Irvine The cross-cultural collaborations forming part of the Globe to […]

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.   Henry V, dir. Thea Sharrock, 21 July 2012 on BBC 2 By Pete Orford Hmm. Henry V was always going to be a bit of a deal breaker here. While […]