Shake Up Spring with Shakespeare (episode 51)

It’s spring! Time for fun! Time to be outside! Time to play
sports! Time to enjoy flowers and birds! Time for picnics! Time
for Shakespeare!

Wait…what? Shakespeare fun? Isn’t Shakespeare serious and
impossible to understand and boring and old, and irrelevant, and
pretty much the opposite of fun?

In a word: no. Shakespeare can be boring and old and serious and
irrelevant, but it doesn’t need to be. In fact, Shakespeare
started out as a guy who moved to London to pursue the career he
wanted, which was to dress up and act and write stories that
appealed to all kinds of people and make money by creating
popular entertainment. His plays were full of naughty jokes and
silly characters and recognizable family drama and challenges to
authority. The people watching the plays were eating and drinking
while they watched, and even threw a bit of food at the actors if
things got a bit dull.

Shakespeare shook things up in the reigns of Elizabeth I and
James I. Joined by fellow playwrights and actors, Shakespeare
made English theatre a vibrant part of London life. Despite the
plague closing the theatres for months at a time and cynical
censors who didn’t want anyone questioning authority, Shakespeare
created worlds out of words that are fun and tragic and
controversial and full of family and friends and enemies and
armies.

We are ready to shake up spring with Shakespeare.


History shows us what's possible.