Tuesday, 26 January 2016

400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death

This year Britain and theatre lovers around the world are celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. The institution that is most strongly connected with the Bard is the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Watch the video below to find out how they are going to celebrate the anniversary and how they want to involve the public in their projects.

The second video shows some kids who became involved in the RSC's educational project. Listen to them to see how excited they are about what they did there, and how Shakespeare's work is still very much alive in British culture.

The third clip, which I have just added, is a BBC Radio 4 voice recording of what Shakespearean English really sounded like. Interestingly, the actor is Ben Crystal, our favourite linguist's son. Then David Crystal discusses the differences between present day English and 16th and 17th century English. I'm sure it's worth your 5 minutes' attention :)






Posted by at

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous2 April 2016 at 21:08

    today one Sicilian guy told me Shakespeare was in fact Sicilian from Messina...;)

    as I have checked, it seems, there is a book "Shakespeare era italiano" ("Shakespeare was Italian") written by retired Sicilian professor Martino Iuvara

    http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/shakespeareitalian.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AgataL3 April 2016 at 20:21

      That's new to me! You must be aware, though, that there are numerous sensational theories concerning Shakespeare's identity, including one according to which he was really a... she (you can find the list of his other possible identities below the text). So, you'd better take this with a pinch of salt ;)

      Delete
  2. The Kingmaker7 May 2016 at 03:27

    nice things to learn here thanks

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)