The Merry Wives of Windsor

Emma Smith continues her Approaching Shakespeare series with a lecture on the play Love's Labour's Lost. 

Professor Emma Smith gives the last of her 2017 Shakespeare lectures on his early comedy, Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

Professor Emma Smith continues her Approaching Shakespeare series with a 2017 lecture on the early history play, Henry VI, Part 2. 

Emma Smith continues her Approaching Shakespeare series with a lecture on the play Love's Labour's Lost. Originally published in the Approaching Shakespeare series. 

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's most popular works, written c1595 in the last years of Elizabeth I. It is a comedy of love and desire and their many complications as well as their simplicity, and a reflection on society's expectations and limits. It is also a ... Show More

A riposte to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew Fletcher’s play is a riposte to Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew: in this lecture I discuss their interconnectedness as a way to identify Fletcher’s particular dramaturgy. 

Professor Tiffany Stern joins Dr Adam Smyth to discuss her current research on the materiality of the early modern play text. What happens to our thinking about plays when prologues, epilogues and songs become mobile pieces, detached from the whole? 

At last, the full, public release of this discussion between Wes Alwan and Bill Youmans covering Shakespeare's 1611 play about revenge, forgiveness, and authorship. Or maybe it's about exploitation, or how we react to changes in status, or perhaps how a liberal education can give ... Show More

Simon Armitage lectures on the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Poet Simon Armitage delivers the Michaelmas Term 2018 lecture entitled 'Damned if he Does and Damned if he Doesn't? Dilemmas and Decisions in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' 

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Lear. Around the turn of 1606, a group of London theatre-goers braved the plague to take in a new play by the well-known impresario, Mr William Shakespeare. Packed into the Globe Theatre, they were treated to a tale of violence, hatred and bet ... Show More

Sophie Duncan delves into the playwright’s world-famous tragedy to reveal what it tells us about youth in the Tudor era The doomed romance of young lovers Romeo and Juliet has captured imaginations across the centuries – but what does William Shakespeare’s play tell us about the ... Show More