Beyond Shakespeare

Merry Christmas everyone! First of a two part Christmas release, a look at the surviving Coventry Mystery plays. This play covers the Nativity through to the slaughter of the innocents. With Stephen Longstaffe as First Shepherd, Herod; Francis Cox as Second Shepherd, Second King; Eric Karoulla as Third Shepherd, Third King; Lois Potter as Gabriel, Second Woman; Liza Graham as Second Prophet, First...

This Is... 1583 is a pilot for an occasional series looking at theatre history on year at a time, with a focus on plays premiering or in rep at the time, and significant events in the realm. With Helen Good, Stephen Longstaffe, Daniel Yabut and host Robert Crighton. If you'd like to hear more of this kind of thing, get in touch, suggest a year, suggest topics... though it might be a while before y...

The Jests of George Peele - Episode 1: The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele, with four of his Companions at Brainford. Performed by Sarah Blake A full audiobook reading, performed by Sarah Blake of Sounds Curious Productions. This is the first part of the collection, released monthly for the next year - followed by an omnibus version. Our patrons have received early access to nearly all the e...

A full cast audio adaptation of Lucidus and Dubius, a play without an ending from around 1450. Listen as two debaters get going on the important issues of theology. Like why the cross wasn't made of stone. Lucidus vs Dubius - age vs youth - master vs student. The !Spoilers! episode is available here - https://audioboom.com/posts/8198976-spoilers-lucidus-and-dubius-fragments . This is one of two di...

Chess Pieces: Exploring A Game at Chess by Thomas Middleton We focus on the closing scenes of the play, specifically the White Knight and Duke's attempt to infiltrate the Black House to uncover the truth about their plans. Reading combinations shift across the session, but mostly it was: Gregory Musson as White Knight; Liza Graham as the Fat Bishop and the Black Bishop's Pawn; Lynsey Beauchamp as...

!Spoilers! Fragments! Which kind of episode is this? Well, it's a bit of both. This is your introduction to the slightly damaged play Lucidus and Dubius - the full cast audio adaptation will follow soon. This is one of two dialogues/plays known as The Winchester Dialogues. It's sister text, Occupation and Idleness, is coming next year. The host is Robert Crighton, who plays Dubius, joined by Liza...

A special discussing episode with performer and producer of the upcoming series of readings of The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele. Sarah Blake has produced a complete reading of the text, which will begin its podcast release next month - patreons have early access to the episodes about six months ahead. Additionally there's a preview of other exclusive patreon content, which you can access...

A First Look read through and discussion of the England's Joy affair. On Saturday 6th November 1602 a show appeared at the Swan Theatre - privately produced by Richard Vennar. It did not go well. We rake through the documents of the case and ask the question - con, or cock up? With Sarah Blake, Aliki Chapple and Alan Scott. The host was Robert Crighton. An overview of the material we looked at can...

We had hoped to be running a live event to look at the 400th anniversary of the 1622 Lord Mayor's Show, but sadly it came to nought. Or at least, this year it did. We can however release this planning / Second Look session, where we had a go at decided what could be done with a text that is slightly trickier to put on in a public street - asking as it does what is happening with representations of...

The last of our full(ish) cast series on the 16th century Lord Mayor's Show, another George Peele number, Descensus Astraea, borne before William Web. With Gillian Horgan, Seb Ranson, Liza Graham, David Ault, Geir Madland, Pamela Flanagan, and Heydn McCabe. Trumpet by Matt Byham - it was hosted and produced by Robert Crighton. Additional sounds from zapsplat.com Also featuring our initial explorin...

The civic pageantry fest continues with our mini reconstruction of the 1590 Lord Mayor's Show by Thomas Nelson, who wrote the device of this pageant for the new Lord Mayor Sir John Allot. This production is less expansive than 1585, as we don't have as much material to use, so this is a more sedate walk through. With the voices of Karim Fronfli as the figure riding the Merman; Liza Graham as the r...

A full cast audio adaptation of the 1585 Lord Mayor's Show - the Device of the Pageant borne before Wolstan Dixie. Based on the pageant text and the eye witness account of Lupold von Wedel. Adapted by Robert Crighton, with additional material by Liza Graham. NB: Some of our recordings suffered from some distortion, we have tidied these sources up as best we can. With expert testimony from Dr Annal...

An exploration of The Funeral of Queen Mary the First - This is a surprise episode, coming about thanks to Helen Good who transcribed this text for us. We have looked at other royal pageantry, where there is a performance text to play with, so this less texty text is not completely outside our usual fare. With Helen Good, Melita Thomas, Johanna Strong, Liza Graham, Gregory Musson, Tom Helsby and E...

A fantasy production meeting for a play we really want to stage - this week Thomas Cromwell. A series of podcasts looking at plays we'd like to see, where we and guests pitch a Fantasy Production. With much merriment and chat, we explore different media, different approaches and a different play each session. Each play has been covered on our YouTube channel, or on the podcast, so you can dig deep...

Welcome to the Butchers play from The Chester Mystery Cycle - The Temptation and the Woman Taken in Adultery, which is play twelve in the sequence.   Dashingly Quirky for the Beyond Shakespeare Podcast presents… The Temptation A Full Cast Audio Adaptation of the Chester Mystery play of The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness, with the Woman taken in Adultery – written by the Unknown. The Compan...

A Proclamation Declaring the Undoubted Right of our Sovereign Lord King James to the Crown of the Realms of England, France and Ireland, from March 1603. A reading of the proclamation made shortly after the death of Elizabeth the First in March 1603. Performed by Robert Crighton The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is supported by its patrons – become a patron and you get to choose the plays we work on...

Chess Pieces: Exploring A Game at Chess by Thomas Middleton A planning session for our future productions of A Game at Chess by Middleton. We focus on the big scenes of the play (Act 2.1, 3.1 & 5.3), where there are more speakers than an audio adaptation might like to have in a single sequence. Can we conflate characters? What do we need to explicate some of the business? And what noises do ch...

It's a mini double bill, with Robert wittering on about the new patreon voted play/workshop series - followed by another 'lost' discussing episode. It's a bittersweet convo with Beth Burns about Hidden Room Theatre's production of Arden of Faversham, which was supposed to come to the UK - but this was recorded pre-pandemic and... well, things didn't turn out the way everyone hoped. But, there is a...

This is our spoilerly introduction to the Chester Temptation play - with the Woman Taken in Adultery. It is play 12 of the Chester cycle, which we've danced around as a sequence a fair amount since our inception.  The forthcoming full cast audio adaptation has been produced by the wonderful Dashingly Quirky, one of a number of upcoming works we've commissioned. The full cast audio adaptation follo...

This is a bonus episode of interviews with the youth company of last year's Lord Mayor's Show reconstruction of The Sun in Aries by Thomas Middleton. This is pretty much the last of our material from the show - new shows to come! Many thanks to Charlie Beer, Holly Bartlett Giles, Quinn Scott, and Sam Plumb for giving their time to this project and that interview – the interview was recorded at Che...

Welcome to this very special !Spoilers! episode, covering The Sun in Aries by Thomas Middleton - it goes through the text in the usual stop/start way, with a mix of readings from our prep for the live recon, plus the original exploring session in full. It's everything you didn't need to know under one roof. I have yet to do a final pass over the audio, so some tweaking will occur prior to final re...

A remixed combination of the two fragmentary play texts, Temperance and Humility and The Four Cardinal Virtues - using the material we recorded for the two separate plays. We think, whilst the match isn't quite perfect, that the similarity of the two texts means we can slot them together, and one day use these fragments to construct a longer, fuller version for performance. In Temperance and other...

Discussing: Look About You with Lois Potter, Ned B. Allen Professor Emerita of the University of Delaware. Yes, it's time for a nice chat with YouTube regular Lois Potter about one of our favourite plays - Look About You, or Robin Hood: The Early Years. We've done exploring sessions on Look About You on YouTube here - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLflmEwgdfKoIR0raF2UFZ6J8lyzEhyAha We've done,...

It's another exciting fragments episode - The Four Cardinal Virtues was written sometime between 1537-47. This is a ridiculously long episode for the length of the fragment, but we don't care; no play left behind! There will be a bonus episode doing a link up with Temperance and Humility, which feels very close to this play, soon. In The Four Cardinal Virtues by the Unknown Robert Crighton was Wil...

Discussing: Robin Hood, Outlaws in Drama with special guest Dr. Liz Oakley-Brown. First of four lost discussing episodes that we should have released ages ago, but a number of reasons - plague/technical problems/inertia - led to delay after delay. But here we are. A chat about Robin Hood in all the plays. We've done, at the least, a first look exploring run at all the Robin Hood plays, plus more f...