Seminar 13: The Shakespeare Circle

Schedule / Horaire

Wednesday 23 April 2014, 11h-13h.

Room: V107.

Leaders / Organisateurs

Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (UK)

Participants

  1. John Astington, University of Toronto (Canada)
    Theatre Friends: The Burbages
  2. Susan Brock, University of Warwick (UK)
    Shakespeare’s Neighbours and Beneficiaries
  3. Paul Edmondson, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (UK)
    Actors and Editors John Heminges and Henry Condell
  4. David Fallow, Independent Scholar (UK)
    His father John Shakespeare
  5. Graham Holderness, University of Hertfordshire (UK)
    His son, Hamnet Shakespeare
  6. Andrew Kesson, University of Roehampton (UK)
    Fellow Dramatists and Early Collaborators Henry Chettle, Robert Greene, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, George Peele
  7. Alan Nelson, University of California, Berkeley (USA)
    His literary patrons the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and Sir John Salusbury
  8. Duncan Salkeld, University of Chichester (UK)
    Collaborator George Wilkins
  9. Bart Van Es, St Catherine’s College, Oxford (UK)
    Fellow Actors Will Kemp, Augustine Phillips, Robert Armin and other members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and King’s Men
  10. Greg Wells, University of Warwick (UK)
    Son-in-law John Hall
  11. Catherine Shrank, University of Sheffield (UK)
    His sister’s family: The Harts
  12. Stanley Wells, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (UK)
    A close family connection: The Combes

Abstracts / Résumés

Most biographies of Shakespeare drive a direct trajectory from his birth to his death, taking note of his relatives, friends, and colleagues only in so far as what is already known about them impinges directly on his life. Yet many of these people are both relatively under-investigated and of interest in their own right. Moreover fresh study of their life stories may well cast both oblique and direct illumination on Shakespeare’s life and on the social and intellectual environment that he inhabited. In the light of this belief we are editing a collection of essays for Cambridge University Press called The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography due to be published in 2016. Some of our contributors are able to take part in this seminar to try out their ideas and discuss their work so far.