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Category Archives: Shakespeare’s World
Lives of Shakespeare
For a man about whom we are supposed to know next to nothing, an awful lot of books have been written about Shakespeare’s life. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about Nicholas Fogg’s new biography of Shakespeare, … Continue reading
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
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
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare's World
Tagged Ben Jonson, Chipping Campden, Dover's Hill, Michael Drayton, Olimpick Games, Olympic Games, Robert Dover, torch
2 Comments
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
Posted in Shakespeare on Stage, Shakespeare's World
Tagged ballad, burning, fire, Globe Theatre, Henry VIII
1 Comment
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
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare's World
Tagged football, Hamlet, Hampton Court, Henry V, John Stow, Philip Stubbes, Richard Mulcaster, Roger Ascham, tennis, The Comedy of Errors
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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
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare's World, Stratford-upon-Avon
Tagged biography, Hidden Shakespeare, Nicholas Fogg
4 Comments
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
Posted in Plays and Poems, Shakespeare's World
Tagged Benet Brandreth, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, persuasion, Ray Fearon, rhetoric, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Arte of Rhetorique, Thomas Wilson
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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
Digging for The Curtain Theatre: archaeological discoveries
On Wednesday morning the news broke that archaeologists have found the remains of the Curtain Theatre in the Shoreditch area of north London, where it’s thought Shakespeare’s plays Henry V and Romeo and Juliet were performed, perhaps for the first time. … Continue reading
Shakespeare’s daughter
David Tennant as Jack Lane, Teresa Banham as Susanna, in The Herbal Bed, RSC 1996 May 26 is the anniversary of the baptism of Shakespeare’s first daughter, Susanna. The only fact that most people know about her is that she … Continue reading
Posted in Legacy, Shakespeare's World, Stratford-upon-Avon
Tagged David Tennant, Holy Trinity Church, John Lane, Jospeh Fiennes, Peter Wehlan, Rafe Smith, Susanna Hall, Susanna Shakespeare, The Herbal Bed, The Tempest
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