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Great Lives

William Shakespeare

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.21.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2011

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

No less a figure than the national bard, William Shakespeare, is nominated for great life status by poetry curator and TV producer, Daisy Goodwin. Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre joins Matthew Parris to put flesh on the life that is remarkably light on known and verifiable facts. How and why did this son of an illiterate glovemaker from Stratford on Avon come to bestride the international stage, adopted not only as England's national poet, but even displacing Goethe and Schiller in Germany? Dromgoole argues that more than a sense of the man is conveyed in his 37 plays.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Annie Matmanis and my name is Nick Grimshaw. How long have we known each other babe?

0:05.0

Probably 20 years now and in that time we've always worked in and around music right?

0:10.0

We have. So it kind of makes sense that we do a podcast better. It sounds

0:13.9

like he's been 20 years in the making. It's not a avatar for podcasts basically, but it is good.

0:18.6

So we put the world to rights with Thank you for downloading this Great Lives podcast from BBC Radio 4.

0:34.2

For more information and details of other podcasts, just visit BBC.co.

0:38.8

UK slash Radio 4.

0:41.6

Welcome to Great Lives, good friend, for Jesus sake for bear to dig the dust enclosied here.

0:48.0

Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones.

0:54.8

There are two reasons why many of us can be at our most ignorant about the lives of some of the

1:00.3

most famous men and women in history.

1:02.8

And both apply in today's case.

1:04.7

One is that not much may have been discoverable.

1:08.2

The other, our Great Lives Edition on Julius Caesar

1:10.9

is an example, is that the individual is so famous that we leave the details

1:14.9

to the experts remaining shockingly ignorant ourselves, as I was, before our Nominator this week

1:21.0

came up with her astonishing because so obvious choice.

1:25.2

A stern warning not to dig the dust is inscribed on the grave of this week's great life,

1:31.1

nominated by the poetry curator behind projects such as the nation's favorite

1:35.2

poems, television producer Daisy Goodwin.

1:38.2

Daisy, welcome.

1:40.2

Maybe we're right, re-reading that Tombstone verse to read it as a plea not to mess with the deceased's memory,

...

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