Monthly Archives: October 2015

In the City of London

This week I visited London’s Guildhall where my niece was granted the Freedom of the City of London. I hadn’t realised that about 1800 Freemen are admitted each year by the Clerk to the Chamberlain of the City of London, and … Continue reading

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Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare

It’s been a good many years since I looked at Anthony Burgess’s 1970 biography Shakespeare. While working in the library at the Shakespeare Centre I always favoured Samuel Schoenbaum’s Documentary Life, so safely based on verifiable facts. Burgess was a … Continue reading

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Agincourt at 600

Today, 25 October 2015 is the day history and Shakespeare-lovers have been waiting to celebrate: the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Here again is the website that is coordinating today’s activities.   Here’s Dan Spencer’s account of what actually … Continue reading

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Shakespeare Jubilees

And now, a fanfare. Earlier this week I received my contributor’s copy of a new book entitled Shakespeare Jubilees: 1769-2014, edited by Christa Jansohn and Dieter Mehl, and published in Germany. More details of the publication, including the contents list, … Continue reading

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Shakespeare

21 October is the anniversary of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s birth in 1772. Born in Devon, he spent much of his life in the West Country including the little village of Nether Stowey where the cottage he lived in can still … Continue reading

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Stratford and “the sere, the yellow leaf”

It’s that time of year when everything feels as if it’s shutting down. Days get shorter, nights colder, and once they’ve had their brief blaze of colour, leaves are gone from the bare branches. The sense of things coming to … Continue reading

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Shakespeare lost in translation?

A week or so ago the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, one of the oldest and largest US Shakespeare festivals, announced they have commissioned “translations” of 39 Shakespeare plays into contemporary English in order to make them accessible to the public. I … Continue reading

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Remembering the Battle of Agincourt

The 600th anniversary of one of the most famous British military victories is being celebrated this month. The actual date is the 25th October 1415, the event the Battle of Agincourt when Henry V, with an outnumbered and outclassed army, … Continue reading

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Retelling the stories of the world’s favourite playwright: the Hogarth Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted, rewritten, altered, reimagined for centuries, beginning just forty years or so after he died. These revisions keep Shakespeare fresh, giving the stories a modern flavour. Shakespeare himself borrowed stories from many other sources. As time … Continue reading

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Shakespeare and Black History Month 2015

With October comes Black History Month, and as ever a number of Shakespeare-related events are taking place. While it was once thought that Shakespeare might have seen Africans only very occasionally, in recent years close study of documentary evidence has … Continue reading

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