I got to see Michael Boyd's production of Tamburlaine last night, a show that focuses as much on the plays' verse as it does on their violence. The production has the most extraordinary and urgent verse speaking I think I've ever heard: fast, fluent and often underscored by the band's rhythmical beat. This blog post is not … Continue reading Rattling bloody facts; or, why Tamburlaine would make a rubbish boyfriend

We've been talking about authorship and the way we study it so much on this blog that I've taken a moment to think aloud about where we've got to as a discipline. This post is unusually scholar-facing for me, both in the sense that it's about scholarship and it’s aimed at my colleagues, and it … Continue reading Authorship studies: where have we got to, and where are we going?

I had the enormous privilege of seeing Julius Caesar last night at London's newest theatre. It's one of the greatest Shakespeare productions I've ever seen: visceral, violently physical, exuberantly political but also jewelled with exquisite details. A few newspaper reviews have said that because the show is loud and frenetic it is therefore not terribly subtle. They … Continue reading ‘I do fear the people’: theatre and the problem with audiences

One of the best-known disputes in popular conversation around Shakespeare is the question of who wrote his work. After all, someone must have written it, so it stands to reason that we need to find out who that someone was, and buy them congratulatory cake. One of the foremost candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's … Continue reading Did Oxford write Shakespeare?