William Shakespeare turns 449 on 23rd of April 2013. His birthday is celebrated in thousands of places around the world every year. Next year will be the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, along with the other major English Shakespeare institutions like the Globe Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare [...]
I’m grateful to Ed Kliman, one of our readers, for drawing my attention to the composer, Robert Johnson, the son of John Johnson, lutenist to Elizabeth I , who had a long working relationship with Shakespeare. The two men worked together on several of the plays, like a Renaissance Rogers and Hammerstein. We tend to [...]
England is one of the world’s top tourist destinations, where visits to the homes of English poets, dramatists, novelists, artists, composers and scientists are firmly on the itinerary. To name just a few, around London one can see the homes of Milton, Darwin, Keats, Coleridge, Dickens, Dr Johnson and many others. A few day trips [...]
We are in the middle of a harsh winter, one that has gripped the northern hemisphere more firmly than usual, and in spite of our modern life with heating wherever we go, it can be quite unpleasant and inconvenient at times. Some people like the winter weather but Shakespeare wasn’t one of them. Shakespeare grew [...]
We are all familiar with a range of Medieval English kings. We know about the fiery, charismatic Bolingbroke who deposed his weak cousin, Richard II, who was indecisive and cowardly. It’s an historical fact that Bolingbroke became Henry IV and we also know that he was an unsuccessful, unfulfilled monarch who spent the last part [...]
It’s almost certain that Shakespeare never left the shores of England but every year thousands of his contemporaries, wealthy young men, embarked on the ‘grand tour’ of European cities: it was an essential part of a gentleman’s education. Although Shakespeare never visited any European cities he set plays in many of them. He always had [...]
The English kings of Shakespeare’s history plays are so convincingly portrayed that they have become historical reality for most people. For example, we follow Shakespeare’s King Henry V from his early youth, enjoying his training for kingship. We are witnesses of his great decisions, we smile at his charming approach to women and we thrill [...]
The distinguished Shakespearean actor, Dame Janet Suzman has just published a book entitled Not Hamlet, about the treatment of women in theatre. One of the chapters addresses the Shakespeare conspiracy theory/authorship debate. She takes the traditional scholarly view that it was one Master William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon who wrote the plays. In her book Dame Janet [...]
The only reason we know anything at all about William Shakespeare and his ancestry is because scholars are very interested in him and have made the effort to find out. That is because his writings present a genius who not only had a great gift for story-telling and the ability to connect human emotion to [...]
The conspirary that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays exists in some circles, which leads to the question who wrote Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets? We address the William Shakespeare authorship controversy here, but thought we’d take a closer look at the candidates who may have written Shakespeare’s plays according to the conspiracy theorists. Authorship Candidate 1: [...]