Tag Archives: Mairi Macdonald

Stratford’s historic spine, Shakespeare forgery and April Fools

  Away on holiday last week, but still in touch with email and twitter, I spotted lots of Shakespeare and Stratford-related stories in the press and online. My post on the Market House coincidentally went live on the same day … Continue reading

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Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? A taste of history at Holy Trinity Church

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? This line begins the English verse beneath the figure of Shakespeare on his monument. It was designed to draw attention to the grave of Shakespeare “with whome, quick nature dide”. Ironically, for … Continue reading

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Stratford’s Guild: the background to Shakespeare’s town

Any guide to the town of Stratford-upon-Avon will mention the buildings of the Guild of the Holy Cross and their association with William Shakespeare and his family. For it was here Shakespeare almost certainly received his education and here he probably … Continue reading

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Learning about education in Shakespeare’s town and the universities

Duncan Salkeld’s new book Shakespeare among the Courtesans is based on close study of documentary evidence, a technique which he notes sometimes takes a battering. Facts, he notes, are “subject to interpretation, and so refracted through a variety of political, … 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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Recording Shakespeare’s town: documents of the Stratford-upon-Avon Corporation

After experiencing Hollywood’s wildly inaccurate version of history in the film Anonymous I’ve returned with relief to a book which looks at the reality. Dr Robert Bearman has continued the task, begun in the 1920s, of transcribing and editing the … Continue reading

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor: Shakespeare’s Lost Years

This week’s Start the Week on BBC Radio 4, broadcast on 4 July, asked how much we need to know about writers’ lives in order to fully appreciate their works. Contributors included a specialist on the medieval poet Dante and … Continue reading

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