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Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight
Early guitars on display in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford It seems that music, whether being listened to or performed, really is good for you. It was recently reported that musicians have better...
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Shakespeare and science fiction
Poster for the science fiction film Forbidden Planet, 1956 It’s hardly surprising that Shakespeare’s play The Tempest has been used as the basis for science fiction. A ship and its crew are wrecked on...
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Shakespeare’s magical island in The Tempest
Patrick Stewart as Prospero in Rupert Goold's RSC production. Photograph by Alastair Muir Where is the unnamed isle in The Tempest? The literal-minded will say that it’s obviously in the Mediterranean,...
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Picturing Shakespeare: Alan O’Cain’s The Tempest
Full Fathom Five, by Alan O'Cain Responses to Shakespeare’s plays come in many forms, and his influence on other art forms such as music, painting and design was explored as part of the British...
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Shakespeare’s shipwrecks
Last week on Twitter, someone drily pointed out in response to the RSC’s new season, that Shakespeare never wrote a shipwreck trilogy. The What country friends is this? season is certainly unusual, and...
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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...
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Shakespeare’s infinite variety
The Tempest I’m always impressed by the number of ways in which people adapt Shakespeare. He and his works seem to have something to say to everyone. Since I began writing this blog I’ve been contacted...
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Stratford to Stratford: Opening the Olympics with Shakespeare
Danny Boyle and his team with the model for the opening ceremony At last the London Olympics are about to begin. It’s estimated that a billion people worldwide will watch the opening ceremony on Friday...
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Opening the Olympics: Danny Boyle’s debt to William Blake
Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony has set off so much discussion that John Wyver of Illuminations has now posted three blog posts each listing ten different pieces that have appeared in the press...
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Our revels now are ended: The Tempest, Olympics and Paralympics
Prospero and Miranda from the Paralympic opening ceremony 2012 has been the year of The Tempest. During this year of the World Shakespeare Festival at least three productions have been seen in the UK,...
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Prospero’s Costumes on Display: In Stitches with the RSC
Patrick Stewart in The Tempest, RSC 2006 The RSC’s Costume Exhibition Into the Wild features three costumes for different Prosperos in The Tempest. It’s the play in which the designer can let his...
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Peter Brook: from enfant terrible to grand old man of the theatre
Nobody has been more influential in the world of the theatre in the last 70 years than Peter Brook. And at the age of 88, he’s still involved, setting out his ideas about why theatre is so important....
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The Tempest in our time and its own
The frontispiece for The Tempest from Rowe’s 1709 edition 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...
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T S Eliot and Shakespeare
Jeremy Irons reading T S Eliot Listening to Jeremy Irons’ reading of T S Eliot’s Four Quartets on Radio 4 last weekend reminded me of the power of Eliot’s poetry. The Poetry Foundation’s website...
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Harvest time in Shakespeare’s England
A detail from Breughel’s The Hay Harvest For once the English summer hasn’t let us down and until the last few days we’ve enjoyed weeks of fine, warm weather. August is harvest-time. In The Tempest,...
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“Your gown’s a most rare fashion”: costume and Shakespeare
The Hardwick Hall portrait of Queen Elizabeth Picture the Elizabethan period and the chances are you will think of portraits, probably one of those dazzling paintings of Queen Elizabeth herself. There...
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Plays and performances in Shakespeare’s theatres
I recently wrote about how Shakespeare leaves gaps within the text which actors are able to fill using their own imaginations. I’ve been reading a book that describes how theatres themselves...
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Speaking Shakespeare’s tragic verse
Richard Burbage Last week Professor Tiffany Stern spoke at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Shakespeare Club on the subject of tragic performances on Shakespeare’s stage. She was struck by the way that writers...
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Shakespeare and Easter
Easter Eggs Over the Easter weekend we’ve probably all eaten too many Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. As the first festival of spring, it’s also traditionally our first opportunity for getting...
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Shakespeare and the British Renaissance
James Fox James Fox’s three-part documentary series A Very British Renaissance has just finished on BBC 4. It was first shown in 2014, and having missed it first time I’m very pleased to have caught up...
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