Skip to 0 minutes and 8 seconds “Oh, young Prince Hamlet, the only flower of Denmark. He is bereft of all the wealth he had! The jewel that adorned his feature most is filched and stol’n away– his wits bereft him. He found me walking in the gallery all alone.” Shakespeare was one of the most successful playwrights of his generation. And today he continues to delight readers and audiences all around the world. As part of the Shakespeare 400 season of events, King’s College London has partnered with Shakespeare’s Globe and the British Library to explore his place on the page and on the stage, both in the early modern period and now, in the 21st century.
Skip to 0 minutes and 51 seconds Join academics, curators, publishers, actors, musicians, and theater directors as we find out more about Shakespeare’s early modern world and consider his construction as a global icon today. “What is your pleasure, madam?” “You know, Helen, I am a mother to you.” “Mine honorable mistress.” “Nay, a mother– why not a mother? When I said a mother, methought you saw a serpent.” We’ll take you onto the stage of the Globe Theater to find out about performance practices, both in the present day capital and in early modern London. We will explore the role of the publisher and the editor and think about textual transmission through the centuries and the impact this has had on how plays are performed and understood today.
Skip to 1 minute and 40 seconds We’ll take a look at some priceless manuscripts and early printed texts in the British Library archives. And we’ll also discover how the early modern book trade shaped the journey of Shakespeare’s text from stage to page through the centuries. We’ll meet practitioners of The Globe and we’ll step into the world of the early modern actor to examine the processes and conditions that were at the heart of the Shakespearean play house. The words are all you’ve got. And the cues are so little that it hardly tells you anything. So actually, it was quite scary. We hope you’ll join us on this free four-week online course in which we explore Shakespeare’s works in print and in performance.
