Author Archives: Sylvia Morris

Simon Schama and The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare and history

Among the must-see television shows for Shakespeare fans this summer has been Simon Schama’s Shakespeare. Love him or hate him, he’s the UK’s highest-profile historian. His style is individual, even eccentric, one minute generalising about the broad sweep of history, … Continue reading

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Writing Britain at the British Library

When visiting other people’s houses, I always enjoy looking at their bookshelves to see what they like to read, and to keep. All my Shakespeare books are in the room where I work, while books on other favourite subjects are … Continue reading

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The first English Olympic games

On 1 July the Olympic flame came through Stratford, passing over the ancient Clopton Bridge and past Shakespeare’s Birthplace on Henley Street before heading north. Earlier in the day it had passed though the beautiful Cotswold town of Chipping Campden. It … Continue reading

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Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow: the burning of Shakespeare’s Globe

  The Globe Theatre, that most famous building, burned to the ground on 29 June 1613. It had stood for only 14 years. It would have been front page news, if newspapers had existed then: at least five separate accounts of … Continue reading

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Julius Caesar on stage and screen

Greg Doran’s production of Julius Caesar breaks new ground. With an all-black cast, set in an unnamed modern African city rather than imperial Rome, the film version has been shown on TV while still being performed onstage at the Royal … Continue reading

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Tennis and football: ball games in Shakespeare’s England

The Olympics are still weeks away but we’re already awash with sporting events. Football’s Euro2012 is still in full swing, and today the nation’s annual two-week love affair with tennis, strawberries and cream begins at Wimbledon. Tennis and football are … Continue reading

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Revealing Shakespeare’s hidden history

In the year of the World Shakespeare Festival a new biography of Shakespeare has hit the bookstands. It’s done so with little fanfare, perhaps appropriately since it has the title Hidden Shakespeare. It sometimes seems that every author feels obliged … Continue reading

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Julius Caesar and Shakespeare’s power to persuade

I’ve always thought of rhetoric as a rather dry subject, but in a recent lecture barrister Benet Brandreth, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Rhetoric Coach, zipped entertaingly through some of the principles in an hour. He succeeded in demonstrating how powerfully rhetoric, and in … Continue reading

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Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare

This year The Queen’s Birthday Honours list has recognised a bumper crop of people in the arts. For me the most pleasing was the knighthood which has been awarded to Kenneth Branagh. His association with Shakespeare goes back to his … Continue reading

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The case for Anne Hathaway

Last week I attended a lecture in which the speaker said, with a laugh, that according to Stephen Greenblatt and others Shakespeare left Stratford in order to get away from his wife. I bristled. Why, when it wasn’t relevant to the … Continue reading

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