This week we are very proud to present the first performance from the alternative RSC — The Rat Shakespeare Company.  Throughout December the Birthplace plays host to a number of rats — the cuddly glove puppet kind rather than the plague-carrying ones — and our younger visitors get a great kick out of following the [...]

William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in the last week of November 1582.  To mark their 430th anniversary, Shakespeare Aloud actress Charlotte Ellen performs Sonnet 145 which contains a play on the name Hathaway and is believed to have been written on the eve – or there abouts -  of their marriage. Enjoy.

To mark the day when Othello was first performed at the Whitehall Palace in London on November 1st 1604, Shakespeare Aloud actor Rich Bunn brings to life one of Iago’s most chilling speeches.  It was late afternoon when we filmed in the hall of the Birthplace, a time of day when the house is lit only by [...]

This visitor from Korea had waited twenty years to come to Shakespeare’s Birthplace and talks in the most striking and memorable way about the effect Shakespeare has had on her life.  Having studied Hamlet at college, she found a particularly personal connection with Shakespeare’s most complex character, “I also stuggled to live my life,” she [...]

Words matter and nowhere more so than on the political campaign trail.  We thought this week was a good time to revisit two of Shakespeare’s most powerful pieces of rhetoric.  Shakespeare Aloud actors Sam Lesser and John-Robert Partridge perform the pivotal speeches from Julius Caesar in the conference hall at the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

It was great to talk to Marissa from Huntingdon in the Cafe of the Birthplace just afer she had made her first plague charm!  The cafe was a very busy place to be over half-term and the noise in the background is the sound of adults talking over coffee and younger visitors making plague charms [...]

Shakespeare’s Birthplace was a great place to be this half-term and Christopher, Edward, Victoria, Anna and Alex, whose Mothers are sisters, give you an idea of the reason why.  The energy, humour and enthusiasm of the kids who came to visit us made it a very special week and talking to Christopher and his siblings [...]

We are delighted to have had Mistress Alice from Mary Arden’s Farm visiting us at the Birthplace this half term.  She has been helping our younger visitors make plague charms, which in Shakespeare’s day would have been viewed as an essential form of health and safety for all sensible Tudors! Mistress Alice and her friends [...]