Shakespeare back from the dead!

Dead?

Reading Shakespearean drama in a stuffy classroom, under pressure to ‘get through’ various acts and scenes, it’s no wonder that students can get bored with the Bard.

In a world of Twitter and celebs it isn’t always easy to understand the immediacy of his verse – Shakespeare’s era seems a world away.

Or alive?

In fact there were huge similarities:

• Just as we hear in the news today, there were issues about taxation and currency devaluation (Eurozone, anyone?)
• Just as in premiership football now, new money was pushing aside traditional hierarchies
• Today’s urban street violence and casual murder concerned Jacobean Londoners too
• ‘You are what you wear’ was as true then as it is now.

The Elizabethan / Jacobean eras witnessed huge changes – so much was in flux that it is entirely appropriate to describe it as Shakespeare’s Restless World.

Shakespeare’s Restless World

This is the title of a fantastic new resource created by the BBC. Taking 20 historical objects
common in Shakespeare’s world, a short audio narrative take listeners right to the heart of his
plays and the daily experience of his audiences.

Neil MacGregor shows how rapiers were used in Romeo and Juliet, why so many plays
contained severed heads and a wealth of other material. There are images and sometimes
videos to accompany every narrative.

Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/shakespeares-restless-world/index.shtml and encounter a Shakespearean word that is very much alive and kicking.