By Sophie Chiari and Mickaël Popelard In this two part quiz, the editors of new book Spectacular Science, Technology and Superstition in the Age of Shakespeare pose some interesting questions in relation to Shakespeare and science and go on to quote from…
By Katherine Gillen Interest in Shakespeare’s economic philosophy intensified in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, reaching beyond academic circles into public discourse. For example, New York’s Public Theater hosted an event called “What Are We Worth? Shakespeare, Money and…
By Gillian Hughes Many of Stevenson’s longer works of fiction might be characterised as historical novels: in Weir of Hermiston Stevenson excavates Edinburgh’s Golden Age, that of Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg, and also its surviving physical traces in the…
By Martin Kratz In 1978, Anthony Burgess published several translations of work by the nineteenth-century Roman poet G.G. Belli. Burgess’s longstanding engagement with Belli had culminated the previous year in the publication of ABBA ABBA (1977), a hybrid novel/literary translation.…
By Sarah Wootton Light is recapturing the attention of contemporary writers, critics, and artists. Ann Wroe’s Six Facets of Light (Cape, 2016) is a series of brilliant reflections on the subject. In 2015 Münster’s Museum of Art and Culture staged…
By Andy Mousley I sometimes wonder which of Shakespeare’s characters most closely resembles Shakespeare himself: ambitious Macbeth? brooding Hamlet? the simultaneously romantic and anti-romantic Rosalind? It’s idle speculation, of course. Less idle (because the evidence is before us) is to…
By Bill Angus If you have ever wondered what was really going on in the secret overhearing and tacit observations, the metadramatic inner-plays and devices which Shakespeare constantly revisits, you may have been told that he was ‘playing with the…
By Sean McEvoy William Shakespeare died four hundred years ago. We know he departed this life on 23 April 1616 because the parish register at Holy Trinity Church Stratford-upon-Avon records the fact. But we don’t have the same proof that…
By Kevin Curran, University of Lausanne What is it about Shakespeare’s writing that makes it endure? Why do his plays and poems continue to entertain, engage, and instruct more than 400 years on? I think it might have something to do with…