Category Archives: Legacy

Disorder, riot, and unweeded gardens

 Bill Bratton, the supercop who’s credited with successfully cutting gang crime in New York and Los Angeles, is going to be consulted by the UK prime minister about how to solve the issue of the recent riots in English cities. … Continue reading

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Asian Shakespeare brought “to the far West” in Edinburgh

It’s Festival time again in Edinburgh. The Fringe Festival is already in full swing and on 12 August the official International Festival will begin. The scale is vast: at the Fringe alone 41,689 acts are being performed. This year the … Continue reading

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Riots and Shakespeare’s ragged multitude

The riots that are currently spreading through UK cities are unprecedented. Mike Butcher, interviewed this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme spoke of how mobile phones have become “weaponised”, and in an interesting turn of phrase he stated “thugs … Continue reading

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Ben Jonson and Anne Hathaways’s shared anniversaries

I couldn’t let the 6 August go by without mentioning that it’s the anniversary of the death of two of the people most important to Shakespeare.   Ben Jonson Ben Jonson’s relationship with Shakespeare spanned almost twenty years, beginning, according to … Continue reading

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I’ll write it straight: The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700

This is the second post looking at the subjects raised by the 29 July conference launching the new online Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700.   The first paper was contributed by the prolific writer and academic Germaine Greer. Ever since the publication of … Continue reading

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Living monuments: Shakespeare’s epitaphs

I’d never heard of the little village of Tong and its church until recently when some visiting relatives mentioned its Shakespeare connections. So I paid a visit to this tiny village in Shropshire to find out more.  The church is sometimes … Continue reading

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Shakespeare writing fair: The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700

Last Friday I attended a conference organised by the University of London School of Advanced Study to celebrate the imminent launch of a great new online resource, the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700. This will supersede the printed Index … Continue reading

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Shakespeare’s Avon, Act 8: Sweet Swan of Avon

Ben Jonson’s memorial poem to Shakespeare published seven years after his death in the First Folio contains lines which famously link Shakespeare to the River Avon and to the magnificent birds that live on it. Sweet Swan of Avon! What … Continue reading

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Shakespeare, portraits, and finding the mind’s construction in the face

Last week I spent some time admiring a group of portraits now in the National Gallery, London, by the North Italian painter Moroni who lived from around 1520 to 1579. One is very well known. In The tailor the subject … Continue reading

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Catch some Shakespeare at a cinema near you

This summer’s going to be a good time to see some great Shakespeare productions, and you might be able to catch some of them without going any further than your local cinema. The idea of screening live or recorded theatre … Continue reading

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