New Thinking: Shakespeare's Life Lessons

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Friendship, domestic violence, power dynamics in the home, and debates about the ethics of war - all topics we can find in the dramas of Shakespeare. Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray, and Emma Whipday share insights from their research, with Lisa Mullen.

Professor Emma Smith is the author of This is Shakespeare. She has presented the Radio 3 Documentary, First Folio Road Trip - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03s4jm7 - and an Essay called The Art of Storytelling https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cypjl

Dr Patrick Gray teaches at Durham University, is the author of Shakespeare And The Fall Of The Roman Republic and has co-edited Shakespeare And Renaissance Ethics.

Dr Emma Whipday teaches at the University of Newcastle and has published Shakespeare's Domestic Tragedies: Violence In The Early Modern Home.

You can find a playlist with other discussions about Shakespeare on the Free Thinking programme website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hm Plus a podcast series with productions of the plays recorded for radio: The Shakespeare Sessions -https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0655br3/episodes/downloads

This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist exploring New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Emma Wallace

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.0	Hello, I'm Lisa Mullen and welcome to an episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast.
0:36.8	Let me introduce a familiar figure.
0:39.3	My name is Shakespeare, William, I owned a feather quill, I am the rider most familiar to you.
0:52.6	My way with words amazes me, came up with so many phrases me, that still the number dazes me too.
1:03.0	Oh, you gotta be cruel to be kind, if truth were known, known love is blind yet each of these quotes you
1:15.1	will find it's what i do there he is billy whiz or so they call him in that cheery little ditty from
1:21.6	horrible histories william shakespeare coiner of fresh phrases king of the quotable quip, and instantly recognisable
1:28.6	in his doublet and hose and goatee beard. His books are thrust into the hands of every English
1:33.5	undergraduate and wash up with every castaway on Desert Island discs, whether they like
1:38.0	it or not. Politicians happily pick his pockets any time they need a septed aisle or a
1:43.3	green and pleasant land.
1:45.2	But surely Shakespeare is more than just a repository of hand-me-down sentiments or an unpleasant
1:50.0	literary ordeal. On free-thinking, we're asking, what life lessons can a man who lived through
1:56.5	the era of plague, war and witch trials possibly teach the toxic and extinction adjacent denizens of
2:02.9	2021. To set my scene, I've decided to go with the apocalyptic opening of Macbeth, one of my
2:09.3	personal favourites. So, scene one, a desert place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three scholars. Not quite
2:16.7	witches, as far as I know, but it's almost the same thing, right?
2:21.3	First step onto the apron stage is Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Hartford College.
2:29.3	Emma, do you recognise the Shakespeare of the horrible histories kind of version, the wordy wizard?
	...

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