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Join the British Shakespeare Association in Denmark from Friday 9th to Sunday 11th April 2010 for Hamlet at Elsinore Performance and Workshops, a unique three-day Hamlet event at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore, Denmark - the play's main location. The event will include a Gala Dinner in the King's Wine Cellars with lively after-dinner entertainment, a series of workshops and talks by leading theatre practitioners and academics and the first ever promenade performance of Hamlet taking audience members around the castle to a multitude of locations not normally accessible to the public. This event will unite past Hamlets, directors and editors of the play, academics, students and theatre lovers in the atmospheric surroundings of the castle.
For more info download the form now!
Elsinore Booking Form
Events
BSA Conference 2011: Shakespeare, Sources and Adaptation
In September 2011 the BSA will host their biennial conference at Cambridge University as a collaboration primarily between the Education and English faculties.
The event, entitled Shakespeare: Sources and Adaptation will explore some of the classical and vernacular drama and poetry, and historical sources that inspired Shakespeares work, and the work literary, artistic, musical and filmic that has in turn been influenced by Shakespeares plays.
This event seeks, like all BSA events, to unite theatre practitioners, academics, teachers, students and Shakespeare enthusiasts in a series of lectures, workshops, seminars and performances. It is also hoped that the theme will encourage participants from a range of disciplines English, Drama, Education, Music, Modern Languages, Classics, History, Art and Film. _______________________________________________
Links to other Shakespeare conferences :
4th Conference of the National Taiwan University (NTU) Shakespeare Forum
9th World Shakespeare conference
PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
17th-22nd July 2011
Renaissance Shakespeare / Shakespeare Renaissances
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Ninth World Shakespeare Congress in Prague will mark the next phase in a journey through four continents. Beginning in Vancouver, this international conference has travelled every five years since 1971 to share Shakespearian scholarship, performance, and pedagogy at another great site: Washington D.C., Stratford-upon-Avon, Berlin, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Valencia and Brisbane. The culturally rich city of Prague, a new setting for the Congress in central Europe, offers a wonderful opportunity to engage in dialogue about Shakespearian reception both here and throughout the world.
Support Us
Our objects are to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare's works and the man. We are an umbrella body whose membership comprises of academics, actors, enthusiasts, theatre directors and producers, teachers and students, all providing a forum for segments of the population interested in Shakespeare. We will support and interface with the Shakespeare Industry, and disburse funds to the best of our ability to as many endeavours as possible that suit our charitable objects.
The British Shakespeare Association is a registered charity, and receives no government or statutory grants. It relies on the generous donations and membership for its development and survival. Though these are difficult times for all, support for the British Shakespeare Association and its work needs more help than ever, even in the smallest ways, whether through your volunteering your services or by virtue of a modest gift.
Shakespeare's works are such an essential part of our national and world heritage that to enable future generations to enjoy, interpret, and understand these, we must constantly make him accessible to all through a broad range of educational and media events to unpack Shakespeare's language, wit and meaning. As an umbrella body embracing everyone from the enthusiast to the academic expert; from the professional actor to the amateur theatrical society, our purpose is to spread the word that Shakespeare was not only the Soul of his Age, but also his works show that he was a man for all time.
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With all our thanks.
Dr Abigail Rokison, Chair Susan Ronald, Chief Executive
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We welcome members from all over the world and from all walks of life, including leading scholars, teachers, theatre practitioners and enthusiasts.
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If you would like to join us, the cost of annual membership is £25
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Membership entitles you to a discount on the Journal of the BSA, published by Routledge. This scholarly journal includes academic articles and reviews. A year's subscription is £15 for members.
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Board of Trustees
Chair: Abigail Rokison
Chief Executive: Susan Ronald
Company Secretary: Felicity Jones
Membership Secretary: Peter Smith
Elected Member: John Drakakis
Elected Member: Ian Martin
Elected Member: Sonia Massai
Elected Member: James Stredder
Elected Member: Andrew Hiscock
Elected Member: Stuart Hampton-Reeves
Elected Member: John Joughin
Shakespeare Institute Rep: Kate Mcluskie
Journal Editor: Deborah Cartmell
Book Reviews
The Rough Guide to Shakespeare is the ultimate guide to the life and work of the worlds greatest play-write; William Shakespeare. With full coverage of the 38 Shakespearian plays, including a synopsis, full character list, stage history and a critical essay for each, this comprehensive guide is both a quick reference and in-depth background guide for theatergoers, students, film buffs and lovers of literature alike. The Rough Guide to Shakespeare also explores Shakespeares sonnets and Shakespeares less well-known narrative poems, combined with fascinating accounts of Shakespeares life and theatre, exploring in colourful detail each plays original performances.
At last we have a new kind of biography of Shakespeare. Starting from Ben Jonsons description of Shakespeare as Soul of the Age, and shunning the deadening march of chronological sequence that is biographys besetting vice, Jonathan Bate selects only the material that, he believes, will help to reveal Shakespeares cultural DNA.
Read the full review here
Links
Royal Shakespeare Company
Shakespeare 4 Kidz
Shakespeare's Globe
*If you have a Shakespeare performance, project or workshop that you feel would be of interest to us, please provide us with the link. A steering committee will decide if it can be posted on our website. If for any reason your link isn't posted, please understand that this is due to a number of requests we receive at all times*.
Shakespeare's Portrait
There is no concrete evidence that William Shakespeare ever commissioned a portrait, and there is no written description of his physical appearance. However, it is thought that portraits of Shakespeare did circulate during his lifetime because of a reference to one in the anonymous play Return from Parnassus (c. 1601), in which a character says "O sweet Mr Shakespeare! I'll have his picture in my study at the court."
The Chandos portrait
It has been claimed that Shakespeare's friend Richard Burbage (15671619) painted the Chandos portrait, but the first known reference to the painting is in a note by George Vertue. Find out more
The Cobbe portrait
The latest portrait to be authenticated as the 'only portrait painted from life. Studies of the early history of the Cobbe painting suggest that it belonged to Shakespeare's literary patron, the 3rd Earl of Southampton and Baron of Tichfield (1573-1624). Find out more
The Droeshout portrait
Originally published at the front of the First Folio in 1623, this has long been thought to be the most accurate portrait of the Bard, as it was included by his two close friends and folio editors, John Hemminges and Henry Condell. Find out more
The Folger portrait
Until the 1940s, this portrait, now owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library, had long been the popular favourite choice of who Shakespeare was. It fell out of favour during the war since it was discovered that the portrait had been overpainted to show the Bard as bald. Today we know that this was common practice. Find out more
The Dorchester portrait
Similar to the Folger and Cobbe portraits, it's believed that this portrait, owned by the 1st Marquess of Dorchester (1606-1680) used the Folger portrait as inspiration. Though not painted during the Bard's lifetime (probably around 1630) it was certainly painted during the lifetime of those who remembered Shakespeare well, including his own daughter Judith, who died in 1662.Find out more
Need to know more?
Press and Media
The remarkably unremarked association between William Shakespeare and William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke
By Robert Macklin
By 10am each day, rain or shine, winter or summer, a small knot of visitors gathers around an imposing black statue in the courtyard outside the entrance to Oxford’s Bodleian Library - a male figure in Tudor dress who surveys the scene with a lordly air. If schoolchildren, some will ask their teacher if it’s William Shakespeare. If adults, some will ask their tour guide the same question.
In each case the response will be, ‘No, I’m afraid not. That’s William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke. Nothing to do with Shakespeare I’m afraid.’ The guides will point to the Latin inscription at the base of the 1600lb brass statue which reveals that Herbert was Chancellor of the University in the early 17th century and that it was donated by his great nephew the 8th Earl, Thomas Herbert.
The more knowledgeable among them will say that the reason the University agreed to accept the donation and give it such pride of place is William Herbert’s remarkable gift during his Chancellorship in 1629 of some 249 ancient Greek manuscripts – purchased by him for the then fabulous sum of £700 – and a Javanese MS from his own collection.
The most knowledgeable among them will, however, reveal the well known (to Shakespeare scholars) literary connection between William Herbert and the great playwright. For he and his younger brother Phillip were the two ‘most noble incomparable brethren’ to whom Shakespeare’s old colleagues Heminge and Condell dedicated the First Folio containing 36 of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, seven years after the playwright’s death in Stratford.
The visitors will nod their heads, the children wipe their noses, and continue their journey through Oxford’s scholarly wonders, satisfied but not especially interested. The statue, with its proud, challenging pose will resume its silent guard of the entrance to the great the halls of learning where some of the most important Shakespearean documents reside.
Half a day’s drive south in Wiltshire is the family seat of the Pembrokes - the magnificent Wilton House, where another statue dominates the entrance to the great hall. This one is of William Shakespeare. It was placed there in 1743 by the 9th Earl of Pembroke, the son of the man who donated the William Herbert statue to the Bodleian. It is based on the figure designed by William Kent for Westminster Abbey two years before and both were sculpted by Peter Sheemakers.
However, there is a subtle difference between the two figures. In each case, Shakespeare is posed leaning casually on a plinth from which a scroll falls open to reveal words from his plays. The Westminster version has his finger resting on a quotation from The Tempest:
The Cloud capt Tow’rs,
The Gorgeous Palaces,
The Solemn Temples,
The Great Globe itself,
Yea all which it Inherit,
Shall Dissolve;
And lie the baseless Fabrick of a Vision
Leave not a wreck behind.
In the Wilton House version, however, the playwright’s hand points to a very different message, this time from Macbeth:
LIFE’s but a walking SHADOW
a poor PLAYER
That struts and frets his hour
upon the STAGE
And then is heard no more.
Indeed, Shakespeare’s finger almost touches the capitalised SHADOW PLAYER phrase with the obvious suggestion – from the 9th Earl – that some kind of ‘shadow play’ or deception is in progress.
It is the very stuff of literary conspiracy theories and in the world of Shakespearean scholarship one might have expected it to attract at least a few errant bees to the Wiltshire honey-pot. But not so. For reasons that escape me, the association between William Herbert and the great playwright has received barely a sideways glance from Shakespearean scholars, amateur literary sleuths or even conspiracy theorists.
Yet once one’s interest is piqued, the connections between the two men become ever more engaging. For example, if we put aside for a moment the contentious dedication on the early Shakespearean poems to Lord Southampton, the only written connection between the Bard and the aristocracy of his day, points directly at William Herbert.
Heminge and Condell are quite unequivocal; these are the key words of their dedication addressed to William (and Phillip): ‘…since your Lordships have been pleased to think these trifles some-thing, heretofore; and have prosecuted both them and their Author living with so much favour, we hope that (they outliving him and he not having the fate, common with some, to be executor to his own writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them you have done unto their parent.’ Clearly, the brothers not only attended the plays but showed both ‘favour’ and ‘indulgence’ to William Shakespeare himself.
Moreover, we know from William Herbert’s own hand that he not only knew Shakespeare’s principal, Richard Burbage personally but valued his friendship dearly. Nearly two months after the great actor-manager’s death in 1619, Pembroke wrote from Whitehall to his friend the Earl of Carlisle that, ‘there was a great supper to the French Ambassador this night here, and even now all the company are at the play, which I being tender-hearted could not endure to see so soon after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbage.’
But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves. By then William Herbert is 39 years old and a great power in the land. More literary works would be dedicated to him than any to other Englishman before or since. Indeed, in stark contrast to Bard, from the moment of his birth on 8 April 1580 he is destined to make his mark in the world of literature and theatre.
He is the eldest son of Lady Mary Sidney and Henry Herbert, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke who sponsored the theatre company that Shakespeare is believed to have joined early in his career when it toured the Welch Marches and performed at Ludlow Castle, the Welsh home of the Sidneys.
When Lady Mary Sidney marries Herbert in 1577, he is 43 and she a mere fifteen. She bears young Will (as he is known) three years later. He arrives into a magical world. While the Herberts’ seat of power remains in the Welsh Marches, the 2nd Lord Pembroke has taken his wife to the magnificent Wilton House, built by his father on the site of a former monastery in the Wiltshire countryside near Salisbury Plain.
The 2nd Earl indulges the cultural ambitions of his young wife who will turn Wilton House into a permanent literary workshop. Her brother, Sir Philip, the most famous writer of his day, virtually takes up residence while working on his sonnet cycle Astrophil and Stella and his most celebrated prose works, A Defence of Poetry and Arcadia- and this despite the fact that he is married at the time to the teenaged Frances Walsingham, the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster and one of the most powerful men in the realm.
Mary and her brother spend much of their time together and Philip’s dedication of the Arcadia to her catches the tone of their relationship: ‘You desired me to do it, and your desire to my heart is an absolute commandment. Now it is done, only for you, only to you.’
Philip is named as one of the Will’s godfathers; eighteen months later Mary produces a daughter, Katherine, a second, Anne in 1583 and a second son, Philip in 1584, the same day that little Katherine dies.
Two years later Sir Philip Sidney himself is killed – aged only 31 - while fighting in the Protestant cause in the Netherlands. All England mourns its finest flower. Mary is devastated. Then in short order both her father and mother die. For two years she buries herself at Wiltshire with her surviving children. And of them, young Will becomes her great hope as the one who will carry forward the divine poetic spark of her beloved brother.
She oversees her eldest son’s early education in the modern languages of French, Italian and Spanish as well as the classical Latin and Greek. Music fills the rooms and corridors of the great house. Mary herself is an accomplished musician and her children are surrounded by melody. She also establishes a chemistry laboratory and pursues scientific learning in many disciplines. It is an extraordinary educational start for the young aristocrat.
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If you have a short video of a good Shakespeare production or workshop, please submit it to us, and we'll see if we can post it on the website.
Contact us
Tel: 01235 751700/ Fax: 01235 751550
79 Marsham St, Suite 6.17
London SW1P 4SB
Registered Charity No. 1123867
Company No. 6446230
Patron: Dame Judi Dench
Special Offers
The RSC and Macmillan are proud to present five new additions of classic Shakespeare Plays
Romeo and Juliet | Othello | Much Ado About Nothing
Henry IV Part I | Henry IV Part II
As the first editions of Shakespeare to be developed by and for the RSC, this series recognises that the most enjoyable way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or be in it. Each new edition breathes new life and vigour into these classic plays and features rich but succinct overviews of the plays history in performance; fresh scene-by-scene analysis; illuminating introductions by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate and interviews with famous Shakespearian actors and directors including: David Tennant, Marianne Eliot, Anthony Sher, Michael Boyd, Adrian Noble and Michael Pennington.
We would like to offer members of the BSA 20% off the above RSC plays (RRP £6.99). This discount can be obtained by entering the code WBSA09A when you buy online at www.palgrave.com.
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