before shakespeare

This weekend would have seen our first workshop on wrestling, gender and entertainment.

Before Shakespeare and Engendering the Stage are delighted to announce our next performance workshop, focusing on combat as entertainment—in both Shakespeare’s time and today.

This year we've had several chances to muse on the architectural and performance function of playing spaces like the Curtain or the Blackfriars—in part thanks to events we've held at these spaces and in part thanks to contributions that open up new aspects of their histories.

The Before Shakespeare conference is over. But while the Before Shakespeare project continues, those of us who gathered together in sunny Roehampton at the end of August for four days of presentations and performances are left to contemplate life after Before Shakespeare.

The conference’s special panel on Christopher Marlowe offered a range of approaches to Marlowe’s plays, but all three highlighted themes of subjugation and violence, perhaps hinting at factors that made Marlowe’s plays so shocking and influential when first performed.

Disclaimer: this post will be a grossly incomplete summary of a tremendously rich and engaging panel "Metre and Repertory", which was so full of fascinating facts and questions that I cannot do them justice here.