The first recorded performance of the theatre company that Shakespeare co-founded was at a playhouse south of the Thames, but was lost to historians for centuries. Now we know where it lies.
This year, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death has been marked by a flood of events around the world. But why did his exit cause so little public grief at the time, in and beyond the country of his birth?
The psychological complexity of Shakespeare’s characters has rendered them timeless. Today, we see The Bard’s influence in shows like ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘True Detective.’
Hamlet begins with a ‘night of the living dead’; Banquo turns into a ghost . The Bard had a supernatural streak and it was crucial to the genesis of Gothic literature.
In the almost 400 years since Shakespeare’s death, his words have been enlisted by an extraordinary range of historical figures. Even the Nazis tried to claim him as a ‘Germanic’ writer.
A copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio of plays has been found in Scotland. While this is good news, a staggering 744 plays from Shakespearian London - at least two of them written by the Bard - remain lost.
Shakespeare’s use of dialect is a key argument used by those who stand by the traditional author. But these so-called “Warwickshire dialect” words are nothing of the sort.
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University