Episode 38: Aubrey Whitlock Explains Exit Pursued by a Bear

01/07/19 • 23 min

In Shakespeare’s play, The Winter’s Tale, there is a famous stage direction where the character Antigonus exits the stage but the written directions in the play state that he is to “exit, pursued by a bear.” So in performance, this character exits as a bear, seemingly from nowhere, arrives to chase him off the stage and into Shakespeare legend. Here to help us look at the history and context of this famous stage direction, is Aubrey Whitlock.

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Episode 37: Francois Laroque Explains Twelfth Night

When it comes to Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night--other than the title and the use of role reversal, there’s seemingly very little to suggest Shakespeare’s play is anything but another comedy. In fact, modern stagings have often found it difficult to revive the play as a holiday feature due precisely to its’ lack of holiday content. However, when we explore the history of the holiday itself, and some of the political associations contained in the specific time in history when Shakespeare penned this play, we discover not only on how Shakespeare may have celebrated this iconic holiday, but on how the play Twelfth Night may be more of a Christmas production than we first realized. Here to help us take a look behind the curtain and into the history of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, as well as to examine the common holiday traditions associated with the festival, is our guest François Laroque.

François Laroque is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and early modern drama at Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Festive World (CUP, 1991), and of Court, Crowd and Playhouse (Thames & Hudson, 1993). He has also co-edited a two-volume anthology of Elizabethan Theatre (Gallimard, Paris, 2009) and published translations of Marlowe’s and of Shakespeare’s plays. His last book is a Dictionnaire amoureux de Shakespeare (“In love with Shakespeare. A personal dictionary”), Paris, Plon, 2016.

Dr. Laroque joins us today to take us behind the curtain and into Shakespeare’s celebration of the popular 16-17th century holiday, Twelfth Night to look specifically at how an understanding of the holiday celebrations could make the play more of a festive performance than it is typically given credit.

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Episode 39: Sarah Enloe and The Blackfriars Theater

When we talk about Shakespeare’s theaters, most often we mean The Globe, with it’s iconic “O’ shape, we sometimes forget that Shakespeare’s plays were actually performed in a variety of venues, and that William was involved in starting the first indoor theater anywhere in the world when he, and his longtime business partner Richard Burbage, established the then-risky venue, The Blackfriars.

With the only accurate replica of The Blackfriars in the world, no one knows the history of this theater better than The American Shakespeare Center, which is why we’ve asked Sarah Enloe, the Director of Education at The ASC to visit with us today and take us behind the curtain to look at the history of Shakespeare’s lesser known, but equally as innovative, indoor theater, The Blackfriars.