Over the Easter holidays the Birthplace has been lucky enough to obtain the valuable services of our very own Birthplace Fool and Birthplace Apothecary.  This troublesome twosome are helped out by members of the RSPC – Royal Shakespeare Puppet Company – and have found our younger visitors are particularly adept at assisting with the casting [...]

Director Gemma Fairlie has been working with the Birthplace in-house acting troupe Shakespeare Aloud for the last few weeks, preparing for an exciting summer of unique performances of some of the greatest scenes and speeches from Shakespeare’s plays.  As a Shakespeare specialist, Gemma’s knowledge of and passion for the art of acting in the period [...]

“Shakespeare is the love of my life” says Mariam from Australia, who first became aware of the genius of Shakespeare as a child in Iraq.  She grew up and became a teacher in Australia and now shares her love of literature with her students in Perth.  It was a real pleasure to talk to her [...]

I asked this lovely couple from Bromsgrove whether this was their first visit to the Birthplace and they told me they had been before – 50 years ago!  Our conversation turned into a  wonderful opportunity to reflect on how the Birthplace has changed in that time and hear some amazing memories of truly historic performances [...]

A gorgeous day at the Birthplace and Johanna and Britta from Cologne Germany took the chance to sit outside in the garden.  They were not only great company but also most illuminating about the influence of the German language on some of the words and grammar used by Shakespeare.  It is worth pointing out that [...]

Amit and Ping’s enthusiasm was infectious and impossible to resist.  Talking to them reminded me how extraordinary it is we can talk about Shakespeare and his influence across the world in the actual house where he grew up.

It was great to talk to Susan and Patricia upstairs at the Birthplace – the perfect place for discussing the importance of Shakespeare and the pros and cons of living in old houses.  Susan grew up in a house in Warwickshire even older than the Birthplace, which usually takes some beating as we believe the [...]

Jake and his Grandfather Jim talk about the way in which coming to the Birthplace gives visitors the chance to ‘live the history’ surrounding Shakespeare and his life.  Jim calls himself just the ‘taxi driver’ for their day out,  but loved hearing about the amazing number of words William Shakespeare brings to the English language. [...]

Yuchen was in conversation with one of our Shakespeare Aloud actresses upstairs at the Birthplace when I asked him to name his favourite Shakespeare play.  Without hesitation he told us it was the complexity of Hamlet and the many ways in which the character could be interpreted that continued to fascinate him.  For the blog [...]

Donna has acted and directed Shakespeare back home in Pennsylvania and Shirley’s son is a working actor who discovered a love of Shakespeare at school – of course they ended up here at the Bard’s home. It was such a pleasure to spend some time in their company and have the chance to talk about [...]