Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Encouraging the sense of wonder: Educating with Shakespeare

Funding and the arts is a subject that never drops off the agenda completely, but since Arts Minister Maria Miller’s speech about funding, indicating that the arts needed to think more about profit, arts organisations and their supporters have been … Continue reading

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Michael Attenborough and Shakespeare

Last week Stratford’s Shakespeare Club was lucky enough to be given a look into internationally-renowned director Michael Attenborough’s views of Shakespeare. Attenborough is currently Artistic Director of the Almeida Theatre in London, though he is resigning from that post after … Continue reading

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Shakespeare in the Park

Unlikely as it seems given the weather, people have been performing outdoors in Britain for hundreds of years, well before the building of purpose-built theatres in Elizabethan London. The medieval mystery cycles were performed in many towns and cities on mobile … Continue reading

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Updating Timon: Simon Russell Beale at the National

Theatre programmes don’t often include an article written by the leading man in the production. Most actors and directors let their work speak for them, and drawing attention to their past successes might be courting disaster. Actors can be a … Continue reading

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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

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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

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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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The Thames Jubilee Pageant: the royal throne of kings

The Jubilee weekend’s most spectacular event, the Thames pageant, was a bit of a victim of the English weather. The brand new Shard, the tallest building in Europe, disappeared into the mist as the weather worsened. Apparently nowhere in the UK … Continue reading

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Playing the Macbeths

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are two of Shakespeare’s most intriguing inventions. No matter how many times you see the play or read it, you are always left with questions. Which of them is more to blame for Duncan’s murder? Are the … Continue reading

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The Comedy of Errors

The RSC’s Shipwreck trilogy is subtitled “What country friends is this?” and in the production of The Comedy of Errors directed by the Palestinian Amir Nizar Zuabi, it’s a question that the audience might easily find themselves asking. Set in … Continue reading

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