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Category Archives: Shakespeare’s World
Mapping Shakespeare’s imagined world
I recently visited the British Museum’s exhibition, Shakespeare: staging the World. It’s an amazing display of objects relating to the world Shakespeare knew, seen alongside video extracts of actors performing speeches from the plays, all arranged around a number of … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare's World
Tagged British Museum, London, maps, Shakespeare: staging the world, Warwickshire
Comments Off on Mapping Shakespeare’s imagined world
Restoration in Shakespeare’s church: the Clopton Chapel
Most visitors to Holy Trinity Church make a beeline for the monument to Shakespeare in the chancel. It’s not surprising, but doing so means visitors miss a number of other things in the church which have a Shakespeare connection. One … Continue reading
Posted in Shakespeare's World, Stratford-upon-Avon
Tagged Clopton Chapel, George Carew, Holy Trinity Church, monument, restoration, William Shakespeare
Comments Off on Restoration in Shakespeare’s church: the Clopton Chapel
Archaeology and Shakespeare: London, Leicester and Stratford
Anyone going in search of Shakespeare’s London thirty years ago would have found little to satisfy them. The City and its surroundings has been occupied for hundreds, even thousands of years, and successive generations have built and rebuilt it. … Continue reading
Finding Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden
Even during Shakespeare’s lifetime, the ancient Forest of Arden was in decline, and I’ve always undertood that all remnants of the forest were long gone, cleared in order to make way for the expansion of human habitation and agriculture. When … Continue reading
The rule of law: Anders Breivik and Richard III
This morning the court in Norway has ruled that Anders Behring Breivik, the killer of 77 Norwegians last summer, is sane. He will be sent to high-security prison from where he hopes to be able to argue that his views … Continue reading
Sight and blindness in Shakespeare
One of the most striking items discussed in the BBC’s radio series Shakespeare’s Restless World earlier this year is the reliquary containing the eye of an executed Jesuit priest. It appealed in a number of ways: its gruesome history, the … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare's World
Tagged blindness, British Museum, execution, eyes, Gunpowder Plot, Jesuit, King Lear, Macbeth, Shakespeare's restless world, Shakespeare: staging the world
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Becoming a courtier: Castiglione, Shakespeare and Richard III
Earlier this week Amanda Vickery, in her radio programme On… Men, looked at the concept of the ideal man, defined in Italy in the sixteenth century, which remained a standard for centuries. You can listen again here for a few … Continue reading
Posted in Plays and Poems, Shakespeare's World
Tagged Amanda Vickery, Castiglione, Richard III, The book of the Courtier, Thomas Peacham, Urbino
Comments Off on Becoming a courtier: Castiglione, Shakespeare and Richard III
Shakespeare and the Olympic arts of war
Although all sport is competitive, many of those which feature in the modern Olympics began as a way of training for warfare. Shakespeare brings several of them into his plays, including wrestling, archery and fencing. Self-defence sports wrestling and boxing date back to … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare's World
Tagged archery, As You Like it, boxing, fencing, Hamlet, hunting, John Stow, Love's Labour's Lost, Olympic Games, Wallace Collection, wrestling
1 Comment
John Taylor, the water poet
John Taylor, known as the Water-Poet, was one of the characters of Elizabethan and Jacobean London. On 25 July 1622 he undertook an impressive publicity stunt, attempting to row down the Thames from London to the Isle of Sheppey in … Continue reading
Posted in Shakespeare's World
Tagged British Library, John Taylor, Shakespeare, The Sculler, Water poet, Writing Britain
8 Comments
Robert Southwell
While browsing in Michael Wood’s book In Search of Shakespeare I found one of those possible Shakespeare references that you’d just love to be true. It relates to the Jesuit Robert Southwell. Born and brought up in England, he first … Continue reading
Posted in Shakespeare's World
Tagged Baddesley Clinton, Burning Babe, Catholic, Jesuit, Macbeth, Robert Southwell
1 Comment