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…
By Benjamin Poore For the uninitiated, Penny Dreadful is a genre-busting neo-Victorian fantasy horror show, set in the 1890s, in a world where Victor Frankenstein, his Creature, Professor Van Helsing, and Dorian Gray can all co-exist. It’s a world where…
By Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko Sherlock Holmes, “the most portrayed literary human character in film and TV” (Guinness World Records News), is skilled at disguising himself and adjusting to different circumstances and yet remaining himself. Few literary characters lose so little in…
Thomas Jefferson maintained a flock of geese to supply him with quills for his pens. The fastest speed for a professional business-letter-writer in 1834 was 30 words in 60 seconds, with the pen travelling 16.5 feet per minute. Jourdan Anderson,…
By Ivan Callus Recent work across literary theory has placed questions of scale in the foreground of critical debate. What is it that’s at stake? Cast your mind back to your childhood engagement with scales of the world, in play.…
What has a nineteenth-century French poet got to do with 1960s American electronica? The poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) published his controversial verse poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal in 1857, followed by his innovative prose poem works. His poetry has…