Shakespeare and Friends

Did Shakespeare Travel?

Darren and Rachel discuss whether or not Shakespeare understood geography and how likely was it that he traveled. Plays discussed include Midsummer Night's Dream, A Winter's Tale, As you like it, Tempest, Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet.Darren's recommendationsMap of Early Modern London https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ELEP1.htmShakespeare and the Mediterranean, edited by Tom Clayton, Susan Brock, and Vicente Forés (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2004).Paul Brown,  ‘“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”: The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism’, in Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 48-71.Rachel's recommendationsBrotton, Jerry. This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World. Published in the US as The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam. Viking, 2016.Dustagheer, Sarah. Shakespeare and London: A Dictionary. The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.Klapště, Jan. The Czech Lands in Medieval Transformation. Translated by [translator name if known], East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, vol. 17, Brill, 2012.Lockhart, Paul Douglas. Denmark, 1513–1660: The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy. Oxford UP, 2007.Aanstad, Rachel The Influences Behind Shakespeare's Plays Forthcoming Pen and Sword 2027

Was Shakespeare a Royalist?

Darren and Rachel discuss whether or not Shakespeare was pro or anti-monarchy.Darren's reading recommendationsBogdanov, Michael. 'Shakespeare the Director’s Cut: Essays on the Tragedies, Comedies and Histories.' Edinburgh: Capercaillie Books, 2013.Figgis, John Neville. 'The Divine Right of Kings', 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914.Freebury-Jones, Darren. “Michael Bogdanov’s Iconoclastic Approach to Political Shakespeare,” New Theatre Quarterly, 35.2 (2019), 99-111.Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V.” In Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985, pp. 18-47.Norwich, John Julius. 'Shakespeare’s Kings'. London: Faber & Faber, 2018.Tillyard, E. M. W. 'Shakespeare’s History Plays'. London: Chatto & Windus, 1944.Rachel's RecommendationsThe Holinshed Project https://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/Holinshed/Shakespeare and Politics    / @shakespearefcg   [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiopo73uhXPiA3yJV_rg72Q] The book that Rachel mentioned that perpetuated the idea that actors did not rehearse is called 'Secrets of Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach' by Patrick Tucker

Did Shakespeare and His Audiences Believe in Fairies?

Darren Freebury-Jones and Rachel Aanstad discuss fairies, witches and the goddess Hecate. What was their history and how did they change because of Shakespeare?Just a heads up when I refer to Puck as a "republican-democrat" I mean as opposed to a royalist not as a member of US political parties.- RDarren's upcoming eventsShakespeare and Kingshiphttps://1620shouse.org.uk/events/shakespea...Susan Dwyer Amussen and Darren Freebury-Jones on Shakespearehttps://www.fane.co.uk/susan-darrenRecommended ReadingMary Ellen Lamb, ‘Taken by the Fairies: Fairy Practices and the Production of Popular Culture in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 51.3 (2000), 277-312.Diane Purkiss, At The Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things (New York: New York University Press, 2000).Marjorie Swann, ‘The Politics of Fairylore in Early Modern English Literature’, Renaissance Quarterly, 43.2 (2000), 449-73.Ronald Hutton, ‘The Making of the Early Modern British Fairy Tradition’, The Historical Journal, 57.4 (2014), 1135-56.Darren Oldridge, ‘Fairies and the Devil in Early Modern England’, The Seventeenth Century, 31.1 (2016), 1-15.Francis Young, Fairies: A History (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2026).Gary Taylor and Rory Loughnane, ‘The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare’s Works’, in The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 417-603.David Fuller, ‘The Fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, for Between Worlds: Folklore and Fairy Tales (2017), available at https://betweenworldsdurham.wordpress.com/...The Elizabethan Fairies: The fairies of Folklore and The Fairies of Shakespeare, By Minor White Latham, Columbia University Press 1919British Goblins by W. Sikes (1879)Folk-Lore of Shakespeare by Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer (1883)The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald T. Scot (1584)Huon of Bordeaux 13th century French poem interpreted by Lord Berners (1466-7)

Could Shakespeare Have Written His Plays?

What did Shakespeare know and when did he know it? How much did he collaborate with other playwrights? How do we know he ever existed at all?

Who is the Baddest of Them All? Shakespeare's Villains

Darren and Rachel discuss Shakespeare's Villains