As I look around at the Shakespeare scene in England at the moment I’m struck by how many young people take to the stage. Actors have flooded in from around the world to participate in the Shakespeare festivities. It’s interesting to reflect on the young man who came to London one day four hundred years [...]
When the young William Shakespeare went to London, almost a hundred miles away from his hometown of Stratford Upon Avon, to look for work, he was doing something unusual. Most young men stayed at home and usually went into the same area of work as their fathers. One might have expected young William to become [...]
While her husband, William, was working hard in London to support the family, Mrs Shakespeare was working hard, too, in the home in Stratford. In the early days of their marriage it would have been very tiring but, as time went by and the family became more prosperous it would have become easier for her. [...]
At a time when all of Shakespeare’s plays are being staged in different places on different kinds of stage in thirty-seven different languages I’m thinking about how different the staging of Shakespeare’s plays are from when Shakespeare wrote them to be staged in his own Globe Theatre. Very often, these days, when you attend the [...]
“Infographics” have been all the rage online for some time, so we thought we’d put together a Shakespeare infographic detailing lots of juicy Shakespeare statistics and information. And without further ado, here’s our shameless bandwagon-jumping “Shakespeare in statistics” infographic: If you want to embed the above Shakespeare infographic to your website simply copy and paste [...]
It’s endlessly fascinating to read Elizabethan practices and customs in the plays of the time. If one shuts one’s eyes to the plots, action and characters of Shakespeare’s plays and looks for other things one can build an understanding of many aspects of Elizabethan life. The conventions of warfare, court life, relationships between the sexes, [...]
Did you know that Shakespeare had his own coat of arms? Sometime after William Shakespeare’s father John Shakespeare applied unsuccessfully to become a gentleman William took his father to the College of Arms to secure their own family coat of arms. The application cost 30 guineas and was granted from the Garter King of Arms [...]
We just came across this high-quality documentary on Shakespeare’s Stratford Upon Avon, made by UK film production company Alpha Star Productions. The documentary is a walk through Shakespeare’s life in Stratford - from the house in which he he was born to the church in which he was buried – and explores the life he lived in the [...]
It’s so very much easier for us, in the twenty-first century, to extend our physical horizons, than it was in previous centuries. Going on short rail breaks from London, for example, allows us to enjoy all manner of pleasures in any part of the country we choose. We can visit the Lake District for a [...]