Blogging Shakespeare

Why should we review theatre? What makes a good theatre review? Do we dare to speak the truth about what we see? Join us for a free webinar on ‘Reviewing Shakespeare’ sponsored by Bloomsbury Publishing. It’s on Monday 6 May at 4.00pm (British Summer Time) and you can register for it by clicking here. Last […]

Below is a collection of videos from the wonderful Shakespeare Birthday celebrations that were held in Stratford on Saturday to celebrate the life of our beloved William Shakespeare. The fabulous Dame Margaret Drabble brought the house down with her reminiscences and anecdotes about Shakespeare:   Dr. Paul Edmondson in conversation with Professor Carol Rutter about […]

The eminent theatre historian Allardyce Nicoll founded the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upo-Avon as a postgraduate centre for the study of Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. Inheriting the former headquarters of the British Council, Mason Croft, the house that once belonged to the popular novelist Marie Corelli and her partner, Bertha Vyver, the Institute opened in October 1951. […]

My own schooling was very different to Shakespeare’s. I didn’t have to arrive at school by 6.30am most mornings; I didn’t have to speak Latin and Greek in the classroom; I wasn’t ever threatened with the birch. I went to Huntington Comprehensive School in York and that is where I fell in love with Shakespeare. […]

Of the three “problem plays,” Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure, with their dark cynicism about sex and politics, seem finally to be coming into their own in our darkly cynical time. Not so All’s Well That Ends Well. All’s Well has been called the comic version of Coriolanus; if nothing else, these are […]

Last month the University of Notre Dame hosted its second annual lecture in honour of Professor Stanley Wells C.B.E. The event was presented in partnership with The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham and was generously supported by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, Notre Dame. You can watch the whole […]

Last spring we launched A Year of Shakespeare – an energetic record and review of all 73 productions which took place in the World Shakespeare Festival. Today, those reviews, by 30 international contributors, are published as A Year of Shakespeare: Re-living the World Shakespeare Festival. It’s well illustrated and represents another innovation from Bloomsbury publishing […]

From the 10th to the 13th of April Verona will host a series of events dedicated to both the cultural role of William Shakespeare in Europe and a discussion of Romeo and Juliet within a context of crisis and reconciliation. These events inaugurate a four-year networked project (2013-2016) promoted by The Shakespeare Institute and the […]

I recently transitioned my voracious readers, in my elementary ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom, from a steady diet of Shakespeare to a more balanced literacy model incorporating other gifted writers, such as J.R.R. Tolkien.  While varying their literary choices has allowed me to introduce them to such great Tolkien works as The Hobbit and […]

While Neil Jordan’s The Borgias was rushed into the programming to coincide with the conclave, the new season is set to offer a new multi-episode version of Romeo and Juliet, produced by the largest private broadcasting company, Mediaset (no apparent relationship with the predilection of its owner, a former prime minister, for adolescent girls). However, […]