Speaking of Shakespeare

This is a talk with Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, located in Stratford-upon-Avon. Here we talk about the Shakespeare Institute’s programs and mission and also about Michael’s recent work on Shakespeare in national repertories across the globe.

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Stephen Wittek of Carnegie Mellon University about conversion, religious and otherwise,  during the early modern period and also about recent developments in Shakespeare and virtual reality. 

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Laura Mandell of Texas A&M University and director of the university's Center of Digital Humanities Research or CoDHR. The CoDHR is  the publisher of the New Variorum Shakespeare, a project that is working to provide open Internet access to the full history of Shakespearean editions and annotations, and much, much more: The CoDHR supports a dazzling array of DH pr...

Christopher Highley of Ohio State University speaks with Thomas Dabbs about his recent book on the Blackfriars district in early modern London and also the Blackfriars complex from which the district got its name. Formed as a religious house for Dominican friars, the Blackfriars complex was repurposed during the Henrican Reformation and became the home for several notable theatre initiatives. In t...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Fiona Ritchie of McGill University about her forthcoming book on 18th-century theatre entitled Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble :  Dabbs and Ritchie also discuss the role of women in the theatre and other elements of London and regional theatre during the 'long' 18th century, a period that dates from 1660 to 1830.

Podcast at https://speakingofshakespeare.buzzsprout.com. Thomas Dabbs talks with Lucy Munro, King’s College, London, mainly about her recent book entitled ‘Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King’s Men’. Also Lucy gives her perspectives on London playhouses during Shakespeare’s time and beyond, with a particular focus on Blackfriars. This talk also covers elements of lost culture in Shakespeare’s tim...

Thomas Dabbs talks with Mark Thornton Burnett of Queen’s University, Belfast, about Shakespearean adaptations, particularly in film and across the globe.

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard University about Greenblatt’s recent work on Shakespeare, the Bible, and Lucretius.

This is a talk with Alec Ryrie, FBA, of Durham University about the relationship between Reformation religion and Shakespeare and Marlowe. In this talk Alec reflects on drama and emotion in Protestantism during the 16th and 17th centuries in England and on purgatory, ghosts, souls, atheism, and church ritual.  Alec is a historian of Protestant  Christianity in general and of religion in early mode...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Sarah Olive of the University of Bangor about global Shakespearean education and about her work on young adult and children’s fiction (where things Shakespearean make many appearances). Sarah is currently on research leave (2022) and is a visiting professor at Kobe Women’s College in Japan.

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Edward Wilson-Lee of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. Wilson-Lee is the author of “Shakespeare in Swahililand,” a study of how Shakespearean plays made their way into East Africa. He is also the author of “The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books,” which examines the life of Columbus’s son, Hernando Colón, and Hernando’s dream of a library that held universal know...

Peggy O’Brien, Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library, about the Folger Method for teaching Shakespeare (see link below). This talk also covers the Folger’s educational offerings online and on-site, including lesson plans and and other offerings for those who teach Shakespeare.  The Folger Method: https://www.folger.edu/the-folger-method Folger Shakespeare Library (homepage): http...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Holger Schott Syme of the University of Toronto about his revisionist understanding of the London theatre during Shakespeare’s time. The talk also covers Holger’s views on acting companies and theatre going in the Elizabethan period, and also his editorial work, specifically on ‘The Spanish Tragedy’. 

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Lena Cowen Orlin about her new book, ‘The Private Life of William Shakespeare’ and about about other areas of her research, including her findings on Tudor homes and her detailed recovery of quotidian life during Shakespeare’s time.  00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:24 - ‘The Private Life of William Shakespeare’: Overview 00:09:20 - Shakespeare’s education in Stratford: Ovid and Cic...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with David Sterling Brown of Binghamton University. David is currently an ACLS/Mellon Scholars and Society Fellow in residence with The Racial Imaginary Institute, founded by Claudia Rankine, and in July 2022 he will join the faculty at Trinity College (USA), his undergraduate alma mater. This conversation includes a look at recent initiatives that explore whiteness and modern...

This is talk with James Shapiro of Columbia University on his recent book, ‘Shakespeare in a Divided America’. This conversation covers highlights of Shapiro’s book on the influence of Shakespeare in American thought and on the minds of such American leaders as John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and Henry Cabot Lodge. The book also examines how Shakespeare appears in American hi...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with John Wall about the completion of the Virtual St Paul's Cathedral Project. This project is a digital reconstruction of St Pauls Cathedral before Christopher Wren and during the time of John Donne and Shakespeare. It provides architectural and acoustic models for Christian worship in the early decades of the Church of England and also a view of the nave and and booksho...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Sonia Massai about her recent book, 'Shakespeare's Accents', and about her work as an expert in early modern drama editing and in the theatre arts. 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:19 - Shakespeare’s Accents 00:09:38 - Mary Hope Baldwin, Studies in Diversity, accent and dialect 00:18:05 - Acoustic diversity 00:20:37 - Wartime Shakespeare 00:34:40 - Textual transmissio...

[See SEGMENTS below]. Audio podcast at: https://speakingofshakespeare.buzzsprout.com.  Thomas Dabbs speaks with Emma Smith of Hertford College, Oxford, speaks about her book, 'This is Shakespeare', and her work as a scholar and theatre consultant. 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:20 - Emma’s book: ‘This is Shakespeare’ 00:13:06 - The humanities and public outreach 00:15:34 - Why the humanities? 00...

This a talk by Andy Kesson about bearbaiting in Shakespeare's London. This talk was given to students and scholars primarily in Japan and hosted by the English Literary Society of Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo.

Also available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpeakingofShakespeare. [See SEGMENTS below] Thomas Dabbs speaks with Shoichiro Kawai of the University of Tokyo about his role as a director, playwright, translator, and scholar. Professor Kawai directs The Kawai Project, a multi-volume series that has staged productions of 'Much Ado about Nothing,'  'The Comedy of Errors,&apos...

Also available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpeakingofShakespeare. [See SEGMENTS below] Thomas Dabbs speaks with Roze Hentschell of Colorado State University about her recent book: 'St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices'. LINKS: The Virtual St Pauls Cathedral Project: https://vpcathedral.chass.ncsu.edu. The Virtual Pauls C...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Andy Kesson of the University of Roehampton. Featured in this talk is new research into Bear Baiting and also a shout out to Andy's new program, 'A Bit Lit.' Andy's research covers a host of topics on theatre history and particularly the under-studied but rich period of English drama in the decades before Shakespeare. LINKS: A Bit Lit: https://abitlit.c...

This podcast is also available on YouTube at 'Speaking of Shakespeare'. This is a conversation with Professor Bryan Reynolds of the University of California, Irvine. In this talk Bryan covers his personal background to show his path from truant student and motocross aficionado to the study of Shakespeare and critical theory at Berkeley and Harvard. Bryan now travels to conflict zones acr...

Thomas Dabbs speaks with Tiffany Stern of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. The Shakespeare Institute is located in Stratford-upon-Avon and has become a beacon of scholarship in studies of Shakespearean performance and texts. In this talk, Professor Stern's work on Shakespearean performance and documents are discussed along with how Shakespearean drama related to the common...