Getting creative. Did Shakespeare write King Lear in lockdown?

The title page of the First Folio, 1623

When lockdown was first imposed, in March 2020, it was pointed out that Shakespeare had written King Lear while under lockdown himself during a period when the theatres were closed because of plague, in 1605-6. James Shapiro discusses this as well as much else to do with Shakespeare’s relevance at the moment, in this interview. Andrew Dickson, too, asks if it’s likely in this Guardian article. It seemed like a bit of a challenge: if Shakespeare could write King Lear, what can you achieve given a few uninterrupted weeks?

As the weeks have turned into months, though, there has been a real shift. During Mental Health Awareness Week back in May the message was that we shouldn’t expect too much of ourselves. I do know people who have been learning a new language or remodelling their garden, but I also know people who’ve been struggling. Anxiety levels are particularly high among those who are isolated and for some, it’s enough to just get through the day. Maybe the idea that Shakespeare shut himself away and wrote a masterpiece while the plague killed many of his fellow-citizens is looking a bit optimistic.

We know very little about how and when Shakespeare wrote, but I’ve always thought it likely that when writing for the theatre Shakespeare needed a deadline. Many of his plays show signs of being completed in a hurry, with loose ends tied up in a rush in the final scene of the play. For someone who was used to living under pressure a long period of uninterrupted time might in itself have been worrying. King Lear, though, is full of the feeling that the familiar world is changing, a feeling many of us now share. Gloucester identifies the symptoms:

“Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father … we have seen the best of our time.”

Shakespeare wrote about the workings of the mind in a time of isolation. He gives the deposed King Richard II, in prison, a speech in which he talks about the challenge of being alone.

Samuel West as Richard II

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I’ll hammer it out.
My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world.

Many creative people have been active in recent months: some composers have been commissioned to write music for lockdown for instance. Maybe you too have been busy getting creative. If so, you have just enough time to enter the King Lear Prizes. These prizes are intended for older people stuck at home because of Coronavirus (over age 70, but there is one category for over 60s) who are not professional writers, musicians or artists, to create new works of literature, poetry, music and art. The closing date is 19 June 2020 and each prize is worth £1000. They are of course named after the idea I’ve already mentioned that King Lear was written during a period of plague.

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Happy 90th birthday, Sir Stanley Wells!

Sir Stanley Wells

21 May 2020 is the 90th birthday of Sir Stanley Wells, without a doubt the greatest living Shakespearean scholar. There can be few people who have not encountered his work, as a writer, lecturer, teacher, editor or mentor. I wrote a post about him back in 2016 when he was awarded his richly-deserved knighthood.

Just reaching 90 is quite an achievement, but he is still active in the field of Shakespeare studies. In his career he has considered Shakespeare from every point of view: the performance of his plays, his poetry, his life, and the world in which he lived. He’s been working with Shakespeare for considerably more years than the playwright was alive, and knows him inside out. He was planning to present a series of four lectures to try to answer the question “What was Shakespeare really like?”. But in the current circumstances this has been impossible so they have been recorded and are now available through the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s website. As well as being able to hear them being delivered by Professor Wells, and introduced by a range of distinguished Shakespeareans, a transcript is also provided.

Whatever his plans were for his big birthday, it’s almost certain that it will be a quieter day than he hoped. But there are certain to be many people raising a glass to him and wishing him many more years to come. Happy Birthday Sir Stanley Wells!

 

 

 

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#SaluteToStratford: Shakespeare and Welcombe

Ridge and furrow markings in the field, Clopton House behind

As their contribution to Shakespeare’s Birthday this year, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has created #SaluteToStratford, where people can share what makes Stratford special to them. Most people have just put up a photo and note about a favourite place, but my husband Richard Morris, Stratford born and bred, wrote the following about the Welcombe hills. It’s an area that is close to his heart, and that has an intriguing Shakespeare connection. Just a short walk from the town, it’s usually quiet, though during lockdown many locals must be taking their exercise there.

As a child the whole area of Welcombe hills was my playground, in fact there is even a photo of my mother holding me as a baby outside the hotel. So I have a long and deep association with these lovely hills north of Stratford.

Later I became interested In archaeology and joined evening classes on field archaeology at the local college. Naturally I was particularly fascinated by the history of the Welcombe hills. We knew there had been a medieval village of Welcombe and the inhabitants had been forced out, but couldn’t locate the position. After mapping all of the medieval ridge and furrow the location was still inconclusive but it was decided that the village is probably buried under the hotel.

Shakespeare seems to have had some involvement, though his role is unclear. On 1st May 1602 he paid £320 in cash to William Combe and his nephew John for four yardlands (about 120 acres) of arable with rights of common for livestock on the Welcombe hills. The Combe family were notoriously rich, greedy usurers, they were also interested in enclosure as there was profit to be made. However the Town Council were opposed to any enclosure of common land and the Town Clerk Thomas Greene, who was also Shakespeare’s cousin, was determined to do something about it. On the 17 November 1614 he was in London and called on Shakespeare who had recently arrived from Stratford. He wrote:

“At my cousin Shakespeare coming yesterday to town I went to see him how he did. He told me that they assured him they meant to enclose no further than Gospel Bush, and so up straight (leaving out part of the dingles to the field) to the gate in Clopton hedge, and take in Salisbury’s piece, and they mean in April to survey the land, and then give satisfaction and not before”.

However instead of waiting until 1 April, Combe’s men started digging and during December they dug a trench surrounded by hedge mounds extending over 50 perches. A couple of local men attempted to fill in the ditch but were beaten up by Combe’s men. Then overnight women and children from Stratford and Bishopton arrived with spades and mattocks and began filling in the ditch and flattening the hedge mound. On the 28th March 1615 Warwick Assizes issued an order restraining Combe from making any enclosure of common land, which was against the laws of the realm.

However Combe was determined to get his way. He had the poor tenants beaten and imprisoned, he also impounded their pigs and sheep. Ultimately by buying up land and houses he depopulated the entire village.

That September Greene made an entry in his diary that Shakespeare “was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe”.

The Welcombe Hotel

What do we make of this ambiguous note? Did Shakespeare mean he couldn’t afford to pay for the enclosure, or that he couldn’t bear the thought (surely a more modern meaning). Did he use a lack of cash as an excuse not to carry out this dodgy proceeding? There is more information here.

We all hope that Shakespeare showed empathy for his fellow-humans in real life just as he did in his plays. As a child, his family faced poverty, but while he knew poverty was a bad thing, it doesn’t follow that he thought it was up to him to prevent it. This great speech in King Lear, about the homeless and destitute, perhaps suggest that relieving poverty is the responsibility of those in power, not individuals.

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.

It’s ironic that the building that now sits on the spot where the unscrupulous Mr Combe forced his impoverished tenants out of their homes is the grandest hotel in the area.

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Shakespeare’s Birthday in lockdown, 2020

King Edward VI School wreath, 2020

The nearest Saturday to Shakespeare’s Birthday has for several decades been the day on which the town of Stratford-upon-Avon holds its biggest celebrations of the year. Birthday Celebrations have been held in some for or another for around two hundred years. They’ve taken a lot of different forms over the years: marching bands, parades, banners, folk dancing, a posh dinner, speeches, flag-pulling, playing the National Anthem, dressing up in national costume or as Shakespeare’s characters and singing Happy Birthday. These and more have all been tried, as the organisers have attempted to find new ways of having a party in the streets, and people from all over the world attend. This year, 2020, the party planned for 25 April is cancelled.

 

Stratford Mayor Annie Justins leads the procession with Sir Frank Benson, 1930

The Celebrations can be traced back to the founding of the town’s Shakespeare Club in 1824: just three years later the first procession of people dressed as Shakespeare’s characters anywhere in the world formed the core of their big event. The procession took three hours to wend its way around the town and was watched by thousands of people. In the 1890s King Edward VI School initiated the tradition of carrying flowers down to the Church to be placed on the grave. It proved so successful that it has become an essential part of the day’s proceedings. Even in these difficult days a beautiful wreath has been laid outside the church near the wall where Shakespeare’s monument stands, placed there by the headmaster of KES. Several other floral tributes were left at the church on 23rd April, including mine, a little bunch of rosemary and garden flowers

Today I’m posting a selection of photographs of Birthday Celebrations from the past. The photos are from a variety of sources: my own collection, the archive of the Shakespeare Club, the collection of Nicholas Fogg, and the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive. I hope they will be enjoyed by everyone who’s self-isolating, looking forward to better times.

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Celebrating Shakespeare’s Birthday, 2020

Sir Stanley Wells

So how are you going to be celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday in 2020? With everybody in lockdown and all actual events cancelled, it’s tempting to forget the whole thing. But here in Stratford-upon-Avon people are determined to mark the day virtually.

The most notable series of events will be the lectures by Sir Stanley Wells coinciding with his own 90th birthday, entitled What was Shakespeare really like? Originally planned as four actual lectures to be delivered during May and June, the lockdown will enable many more people to hear them as podcasts every Thursday for the next four weeks. The first will be aired on Thursday 23 April. Chaired by Professor Russell Jackson of the University of Birmingham, Sir Stanley will discuss the question “What manner of man was Shakespeare?”. Later lectures will ask “How did Shakespeare write a play?”, “What do the Sonnets tell us about Shakespeare?” and “What made Shakespeare laugh?”.

Sir Stanley has been closely associated with all the major Shakespeare organisations in the town, and is rightly known as the world’s leading Shakespearian. Still closely involved with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, his office is in the Shakespeare Centre next door to the Birthplace itself. Although all its actual sites are closed for now, the SBT is organising a virtual event designed to be a reminder that Stratford and its people will be back. Here’s a description of what they’re planning.

Salute to Stratford

“We’re going to give a massive #SaluteToStratford across social media to mark the 456th anniversary of our Bard’s birthday on 23 April.  Stratford-upon-Avon is the beating heart of the global Shakespeare story and we want to celebrate our community here with the world.”

“If you have a story (however big or small) about what makes Stratford special, then we want to hear it. Whether you’ve visited once, lived here all your life or always had us on the travel to-do list. We’re keen to celebrate everything about what makes Stratford special, so it doesn’t have to be about Shakespeare! “

“You might have a favourite spot, a cherished memory, or an imagined itinerary for a future visit. Anything goes, so share your stories on social media on 23 April using #SaluteToStratford. “

One of the things that’s most heartening about the current crisis is the inventive ways people are finding to use their time in creative ways. The Royal Shakespeare Company is tapping into this trend: “Film or photograph your Shakespeare in any way you like and upload it to your Instagram, Twitter or Youtube, tagging @theRSC and using the hashtag #ShareYourShakespeare.” They’ll be sharing them for the next few weeks. As they say, no idea is too silly: one of their suggestions is that you might like to recreate the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet using vegetables. or, more conventionally, draw or paint your favourite scene.

Ewan Fernie and Adrian Lester

The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford is part of the University of Birmingham, and Professor Ewan Fernie is managing the Everything to Everybody project, opening up the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library to the people of the city. On Shakespeare’s Birthday Professor Fernie and actor Adrian Lester talk to Islam Issa about Birmingham’s First Folio and about George Dawson, the man who founded the Library and brought the Folio to the city. It’s being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 10pm.

Moving to another great Shakespeare Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC is organising its own virtual events beginning at 11am Eastern standard time (five hours behind the UK), and continuing until 7.30pm (12.30 UK time). Starting with a discussion about “Why do Fabulously Creative People Like Shakespeare” they move on to “Home-Schooling at Shakespeare’s Table: The Meaning of Meals in The Taming of the Shrew”, and that’s just before lunch. The day rounds off with a screening of a performance of Macbeth.

These are just a few of the ideas people have come up with, others including readings of plays and sonnets, performances of Shakespeare’s songs and talks on lots of different subjects. Although they are concentrated here in Stratford-upon-Avon, this outpouring of Shakespeare-related celebration goes to show how important his works are to people from all countries and all cultures.

Shakespeare’s bust in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

For me, I’ll be celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday quietly, wearing a sprig of rosemary for remembrance, taken from a plant in my own garden in Stratford-upon-Avon. My daily walk will take me down to Holy Trinity Church, closed for now, and to the path alongside the River Avon to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. I’ll read some of my favourite speeches and remember some of the great performances I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy.  On Saturday, when the town would normally be heaving with visitors, flags flying, bands playing, the Town Council dressed in their official robes, I’ll be putting up another post including photographs of Birthdays from the past.

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Easter at Anne Hathaway’s in lockdown

Anne Hathaway’s Cottage

Describing Easter, Nicholas Breton in Fastasticks wrote “There is mirth and job where there is health and liberty…I conclude it is a day of much delightfulness: the sun’s dancing day and the Earth’s holiday”. It’s also a time of hope and love. No place associated with William Shakespeare could be more appropriate at this time of year than Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, the thatched farmhouse beautifully situated in the little village of Shottery, where Shakespeare wooed his wife-to-be. Normally, at Easter, the Cottage would be heaving with tourists, enjoying the picturesque house, beautiful garden and blossom-filled orchard.

Alas, that’s not how it is in 2020. On Good Friday afternoon I took a walk out to Shottery. For several years I lived in a cottage almost next door to Anne Hathaway’s and in the season got used to queues of people waiting to get in, and coaches dropping their passengers off right outside our house. Even though nobody has to stand by the road on the way to the ticket office any more, at this time of year the place would still be buzzing with people from all over the world. How strange then to find the whole place deserted – even the road outside the cottage is currently closed off so there is no passing traffic. Perhaps we should be grateful – this peaceful scene is probably much more how it would have been in Shakespeare’s day, but as anyone who has worked in tourism knows, Easter is the most important weekend of the year, after winter months of just ticking over. It didn’t feel as if we should be celebrating.

Snake’s Head Fritillary by Shottery Brook

We had the place, then, almost to ourselves. The whole property is closed, including the brook walk, but looking over the fence we could see how it’s currently at its most lovely, full of spring flowers including many snake’s head fritillaries. These lovely plants with their mottled flowers are thought to be the ones that Shakespeare describes in Venus and Adonis, the blooms into which Adonis is metamorphosed after death. He’s likely to have chosen them instead of the traditional anemone because they were fashionable, having only recently been imported into the country.

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d
Was melted like a vapour from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

It’s a story of love and loss, of a kind of resurrection after the tragedy of death, appropriate for Easter in any year. During these uncertain, frightening times, keep safe and look forward to another year when Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon will be there to welcome you. Here are some of our photographs of Shottery in lockdown which I hope people will enjoy.

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Wordsworth, Shakespeare and nature in time of crisis

Kingfisher on the Avon April 2020

7 April 2020 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Wordsworth. Since most of the world entered into lockdown, short walks have become our only distraction, and we have been taking more notice of the natural world. David Attenborough, who has done more than anyone to promote nature recently wrote “We are dependent on the natural world for every breath of air we take and every mouthful of food we eat. But …we are also dependent on it for our sanity and sense of proportion…“In times of crisis, the natural world is a source of both joy and solace…[it] produces the comfort that can come from nothing else”

These sentiments echo those expressed by William Wordsworth. In the poem usually known by the shortened title Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth examines the effects nature has had on him. These are extracts from the longer poem: if you don’t know it, please read the whole thing.

After describing beautiful scenes of the natural world Wordsworth writes about how their memory affects him:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:….

Chiff-chaff

For I have learned;
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being. …
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us.

The natural world is ingrained in almost everything Shakespeare wrote, and in Sonnet 98 he writes about the pleasures of Spring, to be enjoyed even in isolation.

blossom

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.
    Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play. 

I’m lucky enough to take my once-a-day walks on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon, along the river and through scrubby areas where trees, bushes and wild flowers grow. I’m always aware that Shakespeare probably walked through these meadows, seeing the same plants and wildlife. It must look pretty well to us how it looked to him. So I’m posting some photos taken recently by my husband Richard Morris for anyone feeling starved of Shakespeare’s natural world.

 

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Live streaming Shakespeare during lockdown

Schaubuehne Theatre Hamlet

It’s spring 2020 and many of us are confined to home in social isolation during the Coronavirus pandemic. With theatres, museums, galleries and cinemas closed, cultural organisations have been quick to announce initiatives to keep people entertained and educated. I’m putting together some links to online offers that Shakespeare-enthusiasts might enjoy, beginning now with theatre productions that can be watched on our computers.

It’s become routine for these to be live-streamed to cinemas, then available either on DVD or to watch on demand by subscription. The difference now is that many companies are making their productions free. While some come from the most obvious sources a few are more obscure. I hope you will enjoy sampling some productions you would never normally think of watching. Some have been very recently announced and details have not yet been finalised so do keep watching the websites for more information.

Coming up imminently are two offerings from the Schaubuehne in Berlin. Their productions are unlikely to have been seen by those off us in the UK so this is a great opportunity to discover something new. They are streaming Hamlet on Wednesday 1 April, and Richard III on Friday 3 April. Both are in German with English subtitles. There’s an explanation in Time Out.

 

You’re more likely to be familiar with Cheek by Jowl. Some of their productions, along with output from other arts organisations, are made available on The Space. At the moment Cheek By Jowl’s production of The Winter’s Tale is available free (as is incidentally Emma Rice’s Wise Children). There’s also a link to it on YouTube here.

Paapa Essiedu as Hamlet, RSC

The Royal Shakespeare Company is offering a month’s free trial of Marquee TV, allowing access to all their content. Details have to be handed over but no money will be taken until the month is up. According to the RSC’s website, RSC members will be able to access this offer for three months. 17 Shakespeare plays are available including comedies Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Tempest, Richard II and the Henry IV plays.

Some of the same productions are available as part of the BBC’s virtual festival of the arts Culture in Quarantine. Details aren’t available yet but six recent titles will be available: Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing and Othello.

 

National Theatre at Home is going to be streaming four of their productions, one a week beginning with One Man, Two Guv’nors in the week beginning 2 April. The fourth week will be their production of Twelfth Night with Tamsin Greig as Malvolia (23-30 April).

Shanty Productions Twelfth Night

From 6 April Shakespeare’s Globe is also to stream six of its productions, each viewable for two weeks in turn. Plays will include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The announcement is here but details have not yet been finalised.

Another one you might not have heard of, but which should be worth watching is a special one-hour edit of a 2018 film version of Twelfth Night from Shanty Productions. Sheila Atim won an award for her performance, and the full film is only normally available on Amazon Prime. The link to YouTube will I believe function when the play is being streamed on a loop 12-6pm GMT every Wednesday evening during the Coronavirus lockdown.

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Social distancing in Shakespeare’s Stratford

Shakespeare’s Birthplace in a deserted Henley Street March 2020

On Monday evening, 16 March 2020 I was consulting with colleagues in the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon about whether, in the light of the coronavirus pandemic, we should cancel our upcoming events, when notifications popped up on my computer informing me firstly that the Royal Shakespeare Theatres were closing down, and then that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust properties were closing down, both with immediate effect. Our decision was made for us.

On Tuesday the Birthday Celebrations at the end of April were cancelled and since then the town’s tourist attractions have followed suit. Stratford Town Walks are suspended, and as from Thursday 19 March Shakespeare’s Schoolroom and Guildhall is closed. The Guild Chapel remains open for quiet contemplation but all services are cancelled. Holy Trinity Church is holding services but is closed to tourists. Checking the website this morning Tudor World, an independent museum in Sheep Street, appears to be still open. Henley Street, newly-repaved, is almost eerily quiet.

Hanging basket at the Shakespeare Hotel

Non Shakespeare-related events are also being cancelled including the Shakespeare Marathon, the Arts Festival, the Spring Literary Festival and the River Festival.

Charity shops are closing. Stratford is a haven for retired people: cultural offers are normally everywhere and the town is a lovely place for friends and relatives to visit. Many tourist sites, including RSC, SBT, the churches and Schoolroom, rely on volunteers, many of whom are in the at risk group. And the volunteers themselves enjoy the social stimulation of volunteering.

 

 

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre temporarily closed March 2020

We don’t know yet if total lockdown will be enforced in the UK. But for now, if you’re not in self-isolation, and in Stratford, there are still things you can do. Town centre businesses are open and hanging baskets, troughs and flower beds are in bloom making it a pleasure to walk round while the “Cradle to Grave” pavement plaques will guide you around the historic streets and buildings. It’s easier than usual to visualise the town as it was before the age of the car. Shakespeare monuments like the Town Hall statue and the Gower Memorial are outdoors and the Riverside walks are as popular as ever.

This is of course a time to follow official advice and by the time this blog is read it may already be out of date. Safety has to be our priority, like Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona we need “to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence”. If we are lucky, the worst we will have to put up with is boredom, and I’m going to be publishing some ideas for staving this off in a day or two. For now I’d like to share one offering with you. A few years ago Jonathan Bate, in collaboration with SBT, created an online course Shakespeare and his world, connecting objects in the SBT’s collections with Shakespeare. The course is not currently available, but Professor Bate has generously made available the excellent short videos which he made for it. Do check them out: hopefully it won’t be too long before we can enjoy the real things again.

 

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Everything to Everybody: opening up Birmingham’s Shakespeare Memorial Library

For years Libraries have been under severe pressure, with many closing their doors, having their opening hours restricted, or having to rely on volunteers. So it’s wonderful to report that one of the great Shakespeare libraries in the West Midlands, the Birmingham Shakespeare Library, is the subject of an aspirational new project that will unlock its treasures for everyone.

Everything to Everybody is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City Council, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and History West Midlands. The Project Director is Professor Ewan Fernie, Chair of Shakespeare Studies and Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham.

What’s particularly heartening about the project is the emphasis on culture in general, and Shakespeare in particular, as something for everyone. Shakespeare organisations already know this: the RSC alone brings Shakespeare to 500,000 young people every year, and cultivates a network of partner schools. And libraries have long argued that they offer far more than books, being valuable community resources, that can provide social cohesion and inspire civic pride. It’s refreshing to hear the democratic aims of Libraries being praised and rewarded.

Ewan Fernie and Adrian Lester examining playbills from the Birmingham Shakespeare Library

The name of the project comes from the founder of the Birmingham Shakespeare Library, George Dawson. He came to the rapidly-growing and dynamic town of Birmingham in 1844 and hoped to educate, and improve the lives of, all the people who lived and worked there. Actor Adrian Lester, project patron, quotes his words: ‘Everything to everybody,’ urged the Library’s visionary founder, George Dawson. What belongs to Britain, belongs to you. No obstacles, no gaps, no separation. It remains an inspiring and relevant challenge.

You’ll find everything you could wish to know in the beautifully-produced guide here.

There are also links from the History West Midlands site here. 

If you’d like to see and hear Ewan Fernie talking about the project, click on the link to watch a lecture he gave recently.

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