Tag Archives: Jonathan Bate

Social distancing in Shakespeare’s Stratford

On Monday evening, 16 March 2020 I was consulting with colleagues in the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon about whether, in the light of the coronavirus pandemic, we should cancel our upcoming events, when notifications popped up on my computer informing … Continue reading

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Shakespeare on-screen news

There’s a real “back to school” feel around now with evenings drawing in and a chill in the air. A great moment then to get cheered up with the latest film about Shakespeare, Bill the Movie, released on 18 September … Continue reading

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Shakespeare and Education

Recently the Huffington Post published an article written by a teenager about how Shakespeare should be taught, specifically to ten-year olds. She remembered her own experience “when I moved up to secondary school I was thrown into the deep end; … Continue reading

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Celebrating 450: the Shakespeare legacy

As I write, we’re reaching the end of the celebrations for Shakespeare’s 450th anniversary. It’s an extraordinary record, and academic Jonathan Bate has recently written about Shakespeare’s status as universal cultural icon. Bate suggests that although the 1964 celebrations were large, they … Continue reading

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Shakespeare and his world: MOOC in progress

I’m very much enjoying the Shakespeare and his World MOOC created by the University of Warwick in collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, devised and presented by Professor Jonathan Bate. Last week the play being examined was The Merchant of … Continue reading

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Shakespeare’s sonnets

I’ve only occasionally written in this blog about Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and then mostly about possible biographical references in them, for instance to Anne Hathaway or to the death of his son Hamnet. These are hard to avoid: for hundreds of … Continue reading

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The future of education for Shakespeare? MOOCs in action

The second of the two Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs)s on Shakespeare is now under way, and in case you fancy trying it out, is still open for enrolment. The first, the Shakespeare Institute’s Hamlet MOOC, has finished, though it’s to be hoped … Continue reading

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Shakespeare, collaboration and the apocryphal plays

The question “how many plays did Shakespeare write?” is not an easy one to answer. The First Folio includes 36 plays, but I’ve always been intrigued by the list of additional plays on the title page of the Third Folio … Continue reading

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The Tempest in our time and its own

A great authority on Shakespeare, the academic Anne Barton, died a few days ago. She always wrote with an awareness of the play as a piece of theatre and her thoughts were often reflected in her husband, John Barton’s productions.  … Continue reading

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Shakespeare’s Dark Lady of the sonnets: fact or fiction?

People have been trying to identify Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, the mysterious woman who is the subject of some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, since the Victorian period. A few years ago Emilia Lanier was the favoured candidate, and before that Mary Fitton. … Continue reading

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