Shakespeare's London

Shakespeare made his stage a world, but he himself probably never travelled further than London.  But his London was one of the biggest cities in Europe, a cultural melting-pot where magnificence jostled with poverty. While he turned to books for most of his plots, he also drew on the city around him, its people, artefacts, manners and interactions: Cleopatra in her barge, Twelfth Night’s Duke Orsino, even Othello, could have been inspired by people he saw in London. Additionally, his working environment  was affected by city regulations; the Globe Theatre was in Southwark because that was outside the City’s jurisdiction, and he  worked there alongside other dubious characters such as prostitutes, bear-keepers, and foreign workmen.

Since the paramount requirement for a professional playwright was to please London theatregoers, he had to attend to their prejudices and assumptions, their sense of patriotism, the racism with which, at times, he subtly took issue, ideas about the roles of the sexes, attitudes to what was right and wrong. Thus, although his work has proved extraordinarily adaptable, it was shaped by distinct local conditions. Understanding Shakespeare’s London is interesting in itself, but also deepens understanding of his plays, and of the whole Tudor period. This course would also be rewarding to those interested in more recent writing about Tudor London, fiction and non fiction.

The sessions will be cued to a great extent by visual evidence; maps, panoramas, and artefacts, notably the ‘Agas’ map of London, the London surveys of John Treswell, and Wenceslaus Hollar’s panorama of London, and also by paintings and surviving objects. We can use maps to walk Shakespeare’s streets in imagination; to understand how the geography of the city expressed social realities; its commercial areas, venues for public display or entertainment, its palaces and slums.