The History Of European Theatre

Episode 237:Later in life Shakespeare was creating his plays with two very different performance spaces in mind, the Globe and the Blackfriars, but probably also with a mind to the portability of plays for when they were taken to the court and into the country on tour. Performing Shakespeare in spaces not specifically designed for the theatre experience has, since then, been a maintained tradition not just in the UK but in worldwide locations. In his book ‘Site Specific Shakespeare’ author Benjamin Blyth examines case studies of different types of performance spaces and how they affect the performances and are used by the practitioners involved. Ben’s study is rooted in his own practical experience of theatre making and offers a fascinating insight into the diversity, challenges, and benefits of working with Shakespeare in different spaces.Benjamin Blyth is a lecturer of Medieval and Early Modern Literature at St. Mary’s University and the University of Calgary. A scholar-practitioner with ten years’ experience directing Shakespeare around the world, Ben specialises in site-specificity and practice-as-research. His work has appeared in critical articles for Early Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin, and Miranda; and his book Site-Specific Shakespeare was published by Cambridge University Press in 2026. Ben’s doctoral monograph, Shakespeare in Shoreditch, will be published by Arden Bloomsbury in January 2027.Links to 'Site Specific Shakespeare'Cambridge University Press: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009617376Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Site-Specific-Shakespeare-Elements-Performance/dp/1009617362/ref=sr_1_1/Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Site-Specific-Shakespeare-Elements-Performance-ebook/dp/B0GY5KMBMF/ref=sr_1_1/Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month.

Episode 236:During the days when the theatres were closed due to the plague, we don’t know if Shakespeare accompanied the King’s Men of tour, holed up in London or returned to Stratford-Upon-Avon for an extended stay, but when he emerged from whatever the Jacobean version of lockdown was, he had a new play ready for the 1611 reopening of the theatres and it was one that carried on with his recent experimentations in theatre.The dating of the playThe early printing of the playThe sources for the playA synopsis of the plotLeontes as a king with some recognisable characteristicsJames 1st and Arabella StuartThe trial of HermioniePaulina – the politically aware womanThe not quite happy endingForgiveness, redemption and the passage of time‘He exits pursued by a bear’The pastoral act of the playPerdita, nature, art, and the meaning of flowersHonesty and the character and role of AutolocusThe ‘reanimation’ of HermionieThe critical and performance history of the playSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month.

Episode 235:Last time I took a first look at ‘The Alchemist’ where Ben Jonson mixed farcical comedy with satire and more serious commentary on the society of the 1610s. The play is notable, among other things, for having the time of plague as it’s setting. It is, I think, the only play from that time to do this. And that was the jumping off point for my conversation with Kay Daly who makes a welcome return to the podcast after having previously discussed Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s world view. Those episodes are still out there on the podcast archive and, I think, well worth a listen if you haven’t done so already.Kay Daly is a writer, novelist, book and theatre reviewer, teacher, and public humanities advocate. Since earning her Ph.D. in English Literature from Northwestern University, she has written for a variety of publications and organizations including The Chicago Review of Books, TimeOut Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, WNET New York Public Media, The Library of Virginia’s blog UnCommonwealth, Dramatics Magazine, and Centerstage Chicago. She also teaches adult enrichment courses focusing on arts and humanities at the Newberry Library in Chicago. And at the end of this episode you can hear a bit about her debut novel which is also concerned with the world of Ben Jonson and is due out in April 2027.I spoke to Kay from her home over a zoom call.Link to Kay's website: https://www.kaydalywriter.comSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month.

Episode 234: In 1610 Ben Jonson was penning what is often considered to be his most comic of comedies.  Johnson was well into his middle age, being thirty-eight years old in 1610 and had several years of producing masques for the court behind him, but with the initial failure of ‘Epicene’ the previous year on the public stage still, no doubt, ringing in his ears.  How much that failure influenced Jonson to turn to high comedy in ‘The Alchemist’ is difficult to say but the play is still one packed with satire, classical allusion, and comment on current fads and fashions, so still a very Jonsonian play.The early performance history of the playThe source material for the playThe early print history of the playThe Acrostic summary of the playA not very brief but necessary summary of the playThe play as a farceThe vices as drivers for the plotThe prologueThe role of Alchemy in the playModels for Subtle, the alchemistThe character of the main protagonists through their names:Face, Subtle, Sir Epicure Mammon, Drugger, Dapper, Kastril, and Dame PliantThe later performance history of the playSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month

Episode 233:Did you know that in 2023 you could have seen the play at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London presented in Juba Arabic using a translation by Joseph Abuk which he had produced for the South Sudan Theatre Company in 2011?  Cymbeline like all Shakespeare plays has been translated and performed in many languages and productions and publications using translations account for a large part of global reach. In his book ‘If This Be Magic’ Daniel Hahn explores the world of translating Shakespeare and looks at the challenges and benefits of Shakespeare in translation.  By examining some of the very big and very small decisions a translator has to make when faced with a Shakespeare text Daniel takes the reader into a world or words and meanings and ponders the question of how does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word has been changed?Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator. His recent work alongside ‘If This Be Magic: the unlikely art of Shakespeare in translation’, include translations of fiction from Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala and Peru.  He is currently co-editing (with Padma Viswanathan) The Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories, and re-translating a French children's classic.Daniel very kindly fitted me into his very busy schedule, so I spoke to him over a zoom call from his hotel room in Nepal where he is about to hold some workshops for translators.Links to ‘If This Be Magic:Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/If-This-Magic-Shakespeare-Translation/dp/1805301624/ref=sr_1_1? Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/If-This-Magic-Shakespeare-Translation/dp/0593801660/ref=sr_1_1?UK Publishers Website: https://canongate.co.uk/books/5026-if-this-be-magic-the-unlikely-art-of-shakespeare-in-translation/USA Publishes Website: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743377/if-this-be-magic-by-daniel-hahn/Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month. 

Episode 232: Although ‘Coriolanus’ is officially Shakespeare’s last Roman tragedy his next play, ‘Cymbeline’, is set in the Roman period, but in England, and suggests that Shakespeare was still deeply attracted to Roman history, although in this case his plundering of Roman history was not directly from Plutarch, but another of his favourite sources.  There are some themes in ‘Cymbeline’ that you will find familiar from ‘Coriolanus’ and will encounter again in ‘The Tempest’, but once again we have a play from Shakespeare that is not quite like any other of his, despite some shared themes with the later plays.  For many Cymbeline remains an enigmatic play, or a flawed experiment, or an example of the work of a playwright growing tired with his work, and perhaps something of all of that is present in the play, but there is, I think, a good argument that Shakespeare was in fact still experimenting with form and content and responding to concerns of his time in his plays just as he always had done.The dating of the playThe early printing of the play‘Innogen’ Vs ‘Imogen’The sources for the playA summary of a complicated plot‘Cymbeline’ as a tragicomedyThe comic character of ClotenJames 1st as represented by King CymbelineThe historical Britain represented in the playThe nobility of the British characters in the playIachimo, the other Roman characters and the English attitude towards ItaliansThe sons of BalariusImogen – a great Shakespeare heroine or slightly unsatisfying?A brief critical history of the playThe later performance history of the playSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month. 

Episode 231: Shakespeare in noted for the diversity of deaths in the plays and the way that he represents the mechanics of those deaths.  My guest for this episode has written a book on this very subject, ‘Death by Shakespeare’, who’s subtitle ‘Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts’, gives just a hint of that diversity.  In the book Kathryn Harkup casts a scientific eye over the varied and creative ways that Shakespeare’s characters die and both questions and admires the accuracy of the portrayals of death in the plays and looks at how Shakespeare’s audience would have received these events, and much more.Kathryn Harkup is a former chemist turned writer and science communicator. Her interests are in anything gothic, gory and geeky, and preferably all three. She has written several books on the crossover between science, literature and pop culture including The Secret Lives of the Elements, The Secret Lives of Molecules, A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, Making the Monster: The Science of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts, Superspy Science: Science, Death and Tech in the World of James Bond and Vampirology: The Science of Horror’s Most Famous Fiend. Her latest book is V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death.I spoke to Kathryn over a zoom callLinks to ‘Death By Shakespeare’Katherine’s Website: https://harkup.co.ukAmazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B084RG3PXDPublisher’s website: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/death-by-shakespeare-9781472958204Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Shakespeare-Snakebites-Stabbings-Broken/dp/1472958209/ref=sr_1_1Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month

Episode 230:Shakespeare probably did not realise it, but his next offering would be his last tragedy and his last Roman play, but for this one he reached back into a much earlier Rome than the world of Caesar, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra that he had previously mined.  ‘Coriolanus’, the choice of the story of the legendary Caius Martius, a 5th century BC Roman general who was both fated and vilified during his political career and who was also known for his antipathy towards a hungry Roman population, might have been inspired by recent events in England.  We can’t be certain of that, but whatever the case there it is quite clearly one of Shakespeare’s most political tragedies which has become a play that perhaps more than any other in the cannon has been used to make political points, particularly when we consider productions in the last century.The dating of the playThe play at the Blackfriars Theatre and in the First FolioThe sources for the playA summary of the plotCoriolanus as a political play, but not representative of his own viewsThe question of how power should be granted The character of CoriolanusThe use of language as an expression of characterThe character and speech of MeneniusThe character and speech of VoluminaThe pivotal moment of silence in the playThe performance history of the playA final word on the play from Willian HazlittSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month.