From Neil MacGregor, the acclaimed creator of A History of the World in 100 Objects and the Director of the British Museum, comes a unique, enthralling exploration of the age of William Shakespeare to accompany a new BBC Radio 4 series. Shakespeare lived through a pivotal period in human history. With the discovery of the New World, the horizons of Old Europe were expanding dramatically - and long-cherished certainties were crumbling. Life was exhilaratingly uncertain. What were Londoners thinking when they went to see Shakespeare's plays? What was it like living in their world? Here Neil MacGregor looks at twenty objects from Shakespeare's life and times, and uncovers the fascinating stories behind them. The objects themselves range from the grand (such as the hoard of gold coins that make up the Salcombe treasure) to the very humble, like the battered trunk and worn garments of an unknown pedlar. But in each case, they allow MacGregor to explore issues as diverse as piracy and Islam, Catholicism and disguise. MacGregor weaves the histories of objects into the words of Shakespeare's plays themselves to suggest to us where his ideas about religion, national identity, the history of England and the world, human nature itself, may have come from. The result is a fresh and thrilling evocation of Shakespeare's world.
Warren. Cup. Vessel, probably found at Bittir, near Jerusalem AD 5–15 Two thousand years ago, the elite members of great empires like that of Rome were not solely concerned with power and conquest. Like all elites they also found time ...
Yet this book is not a history of religion, nor an argument in favour of faith. It is about the stories which give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in the world.
For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history.
A hilarious, darkly comic graphic retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in radically condensed prose by legendary Swedish children’s author Barbro Lindgren and illustrator Anna Höglund. Look Hamlet. Hamlet not happy. Hamlet’s mommy dumb.
Harold F. Brooks, Arden2 (London: Routledge, 1979)—subsequent references are to this edition, checked against the more recent Oxford text. 27. See, for example, Kemp, Wonder, B3a–b, where the author triumphs first over 'a lusty tall ...
So sit back and watch as buildings rise and fall over the centuries, and "the beer drinker's Bill Bryson" (TLS) takes us on an entertaining tour through six centuries of history, through the stories of everyone that ever drank in one pub.
How did plague turn Shakespeare from a jobbing hack into a courtly poet? How did Bottom's dream rewrite the Bible? How did Shakespeare's plays lead to the deaths of an...
If We Were Villains was named one of Bustle's Best Thriller Novels of the Year, and Mystery Scene says, "A well-written and gripping ode to the stage...A fascinating, unorthodox take on rivalry, friendship, and truth."
The tour was the brainchild of Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the Globe, and in Hamlet: Globe to Globe, Dromgoole takes readers along with him.
swerve in the bloodline, repeated in the astonishing outcome of Jacob's sheep breeding, in which spotted lambs are strangely born ... see the situation differently: “Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father's house?