Monthly Archives: March 2012

Bram Stoker’s centenary and the Shakespeare connection

2012 marks the centenary of the death of Bram Stoker. At the time of his death on 20 April 1912 he would probably have seen the years he spent in London, theatrical manager to the great Shakespearian actor Henry Irving, … Continue reading

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Shakespeare in Education: a new blog for the BSA

I’ve been working on launching a new blog, Shakespeare in Education, on behalf of the BSA’s Education network. I wrote a few weeks ago about the British Shakespeare Association’s Lancaster Conference, and since then education specialist James Stredder and I … Continue reading

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Shakespeare at Yale

  It isn’t just the UK that’s gone Shakespeare-mad to coincide with this year’s London Olympics and World Shakespeare Festival. At Yale University in the USA a fabulous exhibition is running that highlights the Beinecke Library’s outstanding collections, called Remembering … Continue reading

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Gregory Doran: Royal Shakespeare Company Artistic Director in waiting

Today Gregory Doran (universally known as Greg), has been appointed as the new Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the most important job in the world of Shakespeare. Those who have been watching Greg for the last two decades … Continue reading

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Shakespeare’s shipwrecks

Last week on Twitter, someone drily pointed out in response to the RSC’s new season, that Shakespeare never wrote a shipwreck trilogy. The What country friends is this? season is certainly unusual, and the cynical might say it’s a marketing … Continue reading

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Shakespeare and the staff of life

Drought, crop failure, disease. The TV shows pictures of helpless people trying to dig in soil as dry as dust: unless international action is taken to help they will soon become heart-wrenching images of starving children. In Kenya alone there … Continue reading

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Edward Alleyn’s legacy and Shakespeare’s theatre

Most of what we know about the elusive world of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre is found in one unique collection of manuscripts. These are known as the Henslowe-Alleyn archive, working theatrical documents created by impresario Philip Henslowe and his illustrious … Continue reading

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Harley Granville Barker and Shakespeare

A new play about the great man of the theatre Harley Granville Barker is now playing at the Hampstead Theatre, London. As explained on the Radio 4 Today programme on 29 February Granville Barker virtually invented the idea of the director, … Continue reading

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Shakespeare’s minds diseased: mental illness and its treatment

Shakespeare was clearly fascinated by mental illness, many characters displaying a variety of symptoms from Lear’s madness, Jaques’ melancholy, Timon’s bitter cursing, Macbeth’s visions and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, to the obsessiveness of Leontes.  It’s usually accepted that Shakespeare was influenced in medical matters by … Continue reading

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International Women’s day: remembering Mary Cowden Clarke

Every year on 8 March International Women’s Day celebrates the achievements of women. All round the world women still suffer serious inequality, and education is one area to which even in the Western world women were denied equal access until … Continue reading

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