How to use this Page

Shortly after her coronation in 1558 Queen Elizabeth I reasserted and maintained royal supremacy within the English church, thus confirming her power as a Protestant leader. Shakespeare's writing flourished under her reign, when Catholic and Protestant doctrines developed distinct methods of worship, mediation, and, perhaps most significantly, power and authority.

The post Gods and religion in Shakespeare’s work [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.

The Public Theater will create an original musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night. According to Playbill.com, Kwame Kwei-Armah Obe has signed on as the director.

This will be the fourth show from the organization’s Public Works program. The New York Times reports that this “program brings together professional and nonprofessional actors from across New York City’s five boroughs with song-and-dance productions of classic works.”

In previous years, the Public Works team has produced musicals based on The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and The Odyssey. The Twelfth Night show will open in Sept. 2016. Click here to download a free digital copy of the Shakespearean comedy.

We want to know what Shakespeare believed. It seems to us important to know. He is our most important writer, and we want to know him from the inside. People regularly tell us that they do know what he believed, though mainly by showing what his father believed, or his contemporaries believed or, more accurately, what they said they believed—by demonstrating, that is, what was possible to believe.

The post Shakespeare and Religion appeared first on OUPblog.

Where did Shakespeare obtain material for his English history plays? The obvious answer would be to say that he drew on the second edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), a massive work numbering no fewer than 3,500,000 words that gave rise to more Renaissance plays than any other book, ancient or modern.

The post Shakespeare and Holinshed’s Chronicles appeared first on OUPblog.

Get to know the team behind the Illuminating Shakespeare project as they reveal their stand-out Shakespearean memories, performances, and quotations.

The post Meet the cast of Illuminating Shakespeare appeared first on OUPblog.

Though a Queen ruled England, gender equality certainly wasn't found in Elizabethan society. Everything from dress to employment followed strict gender roles, and yet there was a certain amount of room for play. There are several cases of (in)famous women who dressed as men and crossed the bounds of "acceptable behavior."

The post Women onstage and offstage in Elizabethan England appeared first on OUPblog.

Not so long ago, we ‘went to the pictures’ (or ‘the movies’) and now they tend to come to us. For many people, visiting a cinema to see films is no longer their principal means of access to the work of film-makers. But however we see them, it’s the seeing as much as the hearing of Shakespeare in this medium that counts. Or rather, it's the interplay between the two.

The post Going to the pictures with Shakespeare appeared first on OUPblog.

Our new children’s book, Ira’s Shakespeare Dream, tells the incredible story of Ira Aldridge. When we’ve shown this book to readers, we get one of two responses:
1) “I’ve never heard of Ira Aldridge.”
2) “You have a book about Ira Aldridge??! That’s so wonderful!”

The truth is, bringing Ira’s story to new readers is one of our great joys as a publisher. His is a story of phenomenal talent and determination, of someone who was truly born to do what he did. Too often, history has let the achievements of black people fall through the cracks–especially when they take place outside the narrative of slavery and civil rights. If you look at the African American biographies that appear most often, so many of them are focused on names we already know: Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass. While it is important to remember these people and their achievements, acknowledging the contributions of black people in other arenas–art, music, science, and in this case, Shakespearean acting–is equally important. 

So: who was Ira Aldridge?

Ira Aldridge was born July 27, 1807, in New York City. As a child, he attended the African Free School, a school established for the children of free African Americans and slaves. During that time, Aldrige would observe plays from high up in the balcony of the Park Theatre.

Ira always loved Shakespeare. His acting career began in his teens, where he acted at the African Grove Theatre, the first resident African American theatre in the United States. Ira dreamed of performing Shakespeare one day on the stage of the Park Theatre. But black actors were not welcome there.

Ira’s father, a church minister, tried to dissuade his son from pursuing acting. He encouraged him to become a minister or teacher, but Ira was determined to pursue his dream. At the age of 17, Ira headed to England as a valet for another actor to try his hand at acting. There, he found work running errands for small theaters and became an understudy for other actors.

When Ira finally got his chance to debut, his performance was met with mixed reviews. While some praised his acting, others did not like seeing a black actor onstage playing “white roles.” But Ira was not discouraged. He worked hard, studied acting, and gradually became known for his talented performances in a variety of roles. Later on, he toured United Kingdom, spending many years performing the lead roles in Othello, Macbeth and Richard III. Ira was most famous for his role as the titular Othello, which he first played at the age of 26. He was the first black actor to play Othello on the English stage.

Despite the fame he gained, Ira never forgot the plight of the enslaved African Americans in the United States. He would sometimes come out at the close of his performances to sit on the edge of the stage, preaching to the audience about the injustice of slavery. He used his performances to raise money to send to abolitionists fighting to end slavery in the United States.

Ira Aldridge toured around Europe and earned great acclaim for his performances. In 1858, the duke of Saxe-Meiningen granted him knighthood. He is the only African American actor listed among the 33 actors honored with plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. The theater at Howard University in Washington, DC is named after him.

Learn more about Ira Aldridge in Ira’s Shakespeare Dream, written by Glenda Armand and illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Additional resources:

Read an interview with author Glenda Armand
View and download the free Teacher’s Guide

What is your favorite literary quote? LeVar Burton, former host of the Reading Rainbow TV show, stars in a BuzzFeed video called “11 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature.”

In the video embedded above, Burton recites sentences written by William Shakespeare, Maurice Sendak, and Natalie Babbitt. Click here to watch a video where Burton tackles a series of bibliophile-themed dilemmas. (via BuzzFeed)

Young Cressingham, one of the witty contrivers of Thomas Middleton's and John Webster's comedy Anything for a Quiet Life (1621), faces a financial problem. His father is wasting his inheritance, and his new stepmother – a misogynistic caricature of the wayward, wicked woman – has decided to seize the family's wealth into her own hands, disinheriting her husband's children.

The post “There is figures in all things”: Historical revisionism and the Battle of Agincourt appeared first on OUPblog.

Since the advent of film and television production, Shakespeare's plays have been adapted, re-imagined, and performed on screen hundreds of times. Although many early Shakespeare adaptations remained faithful to his work, over time writers and directors selected only certain characters, plot lines, conflicts, or themes into their films.

The post Shakespeare on screen [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.

In anticipation of Shakespeare celebrations next year, we asked Oxford University Press and Oxford University staff members to choose their favourite Shakespeare adaptation. From classic to contemporary, the obscure to the infamous, we've collected a whole range of faithful and quirky translations from play text to film. Did your favourite film or television programme make the list?

The post What is your favourite Shakespeare adaptation? appeared first on OUPblog.

George Bernard Shaw once remarked on William Shakespeare's "gift of telling a story (provided some one else told it to him first)." Shakespeare knew the works of many great writers, such as Raphael Holinshed, Ludovico Ariosto, and Geoffrey Chaucer. How did these men, and many others, influence Shakespeare and his work?

The post Who was on Shakespeare’s bookshelf? [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.

Some people sign their books but never read them. Others devour books without bothering to inscribe their names. Shakespeare falls in the latter category. In fact we don’t truly know whether he owned books at all; just six Shakespearean signatures are considered authentic, and they appear exclusively in legal documents.

The post Shakespeare’s encounter with Michel de Montaigne appeared first on OUPblog.

Note: Join us this Thursday, August 27, at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing for an author event with Christopher Moore. Describe your latest book. Secondhand Souls is the sequel to my bestselling novel A Dirty Job, which was about a single dad in San Francisco who gets the job of being Death and runs [...]

In the past, A.J. Jacobs revealed that he has several famous \"cousins\" including former President George H. W. Bush, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, and Harry Potter movie series actor Daniel Radcliffe.

Over the weekend, Jacobs hosted the Global Family Reunion in New York City. The journalist shared an extended family tree which unveiled his connection to several notable authors.

According to Jacobs’ research, he is cousin to the following writers: English playwright William Shakespeare, Green Eggs and Ham creator Dr. Seuss, comics legend Stan Lee, horror master Stephen King, and Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway. Click here to watch a TED talk about the origins of this genealogy project.

Two new clips have been unveiled from a new Macbeth film adaptation. The videos embedded above and below showcases Michael Fassbender as the tragic King of Scotland and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. According to Deadline.com, Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie, and Todd Louis collaborated on adapting William Shakespeare’s famed play to write the script.

Filmmaker Justin Kurzel served as the director of this project. The movie was recently showcased at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. A theatrical release date for United Kingdom audiences is set for October 2nd; no United States date has been scheduled yet. (via The Guardian)

A historian named Mark Griffiths claims to have uncovered “the true face of” William Shakespeare. According to Country Life magazine, this likeness of the Bard can be found on the title page of John Gerard‘s 1597 botany book, The Herball.

The video embedded features Griffiths recounting how he made this discovery. Below, we’ve posted the cover from the May 2015 issue of Country Life magazine which showcases Shakespeare’s portrait.

The world’s greatest English playwright lived from 1564 to 1616. Given the publication date of Gerard’s plant tome, this means that the image was created during Shakespeare’s lifetime. The Guardian reports that “the only known authentic likenesses of Shakespeare are in the First Folio and the effigy on his monument at Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Both of these were made posthumously.” (via CNN.com)