Shakespeare
Verdi
Verdi has a peculiar if not unique place in the pantheon of great composers. If you love classical music at…
Bard goes to Bollywood
The Globe’s new chatelaine, Emma Rice, has certainly shaken the old place up. It’s almost unrecognisable. Huge white plastic orbs…
Something to crow about
There’s no way of saying this without shredding the last vestiges of my critical credibility, but this new Ben Elton…
Black mischief among the Medicis
The life – and violent death – of a very unusual Renaissance prince has Alex von Tunzelmann enthralled
Shakespeare’s pronunciation
Sir John Harington told a story in 1596 about a lady at court asking her gentlewoman to inquire which Mr…
Word processing
‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and…
All the world’s a stage
James Woodall talks to the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, who has brought a swathe of Shakespeare’s history plays to the stage in Dutch (four hours of it)
Death and the Bard
How did Shakespeare kick the bucket? Lloyd Evans considers the evidence
Shakespeare400
The feeding frenzy over the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death has reached its peak. Recently we’ve had Shakespeare’s complete…
Sound and fury
There was a genteel brouhaha last year — leaders in the Times, letters to the Telegraph, tutting in the galleries…
Courting Sultana Isabel
The idea for a mechanical cock was never going to work. In 1595 the English ambassador to Constantinople, Edward Barton,…
Second thoughts
You revisit an old love with wariness. Time’s passed for both of you — sharp edges have been smoothed, and…
The rite stuff
Theo Hobson explores the enduring appeal that religion has for dramatists
Sex on legs
That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…
Master of psychology
The Master Builder, if done properly, can be one of those theatrical experiences that make you wonder if the Greeks…
Rewriting the merchant’s tale
Howard Jacobson’s novelistic riff on The Merchant of Venice for the Hogarth Shakespeare project turns, unsurprisingly, on what makes some…
Diary
Whatever you do, don’t allow your six-year-old to be caught short at Crewkerne station. With the rain pouring and the…
The Spectator’s Notes
No amount of reports in the press that Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet-making is farcical and his party is divided should…
Why ‘safe’ is Dot Wordsworth’s word of the year
‘Makes me feel sick,’ said my husband, referring not to the third mince pie of the morning (in Advent, supposedly…
I’m a Celebrity is like The Simpsons: good if you’re thick; even better if you’re not
The best bit in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV) will be when the prisoners finally revolt…
Winter wonderland
Kenneth Branagh opens his West End tenancy with Shakespeare’s inexplicably popular The Winter’s Tale. We start in Sicily where Leontes…
How did this plotless goon-show wind up at the Royal Court?
One of the challenges of art is to know the difference between innovation and error. I wonder sometimes if the…
Battle fatigue
Can anyone explain this sudden enthusiasm for Agincourt, that unexpected victory over the French, now being celebrated, or rather commemorated,…
Shakespeare at his freest and most exuberant: The Wars of the Roses reviewed
The RSC’s The Wars of the Roses solves a peculiar literary problem. Shakespeare’s earliest history plays are entitled Henry VI…
Bard times
It is fair to say that Jeanette Winterson is not Shakespeare, though I cannot imagine why any authors would accept…
