Shakespeare and history

 One of the things I'll miss about St. Louis is Shakespeare in the park. Staged on the hillside below the Art Museum in Forest Park, the productions were uniformly excellent. The actors lived their roles, the costumes and sets were clever, the sound system was excellent, and except when it rained, the outdoor setting was delightful. We'd pick up sandwiches at Saint Louis Bread Company (the origin of Panera), toss a bottle of wine and some cups into a canvas bag, and find a site close to the stage.

Of course, I'd been exposed to Shakespeare in junior high and high school, both the plays and the sonnets. But there was always something ossified in reading the texts. There was a film version of Romeo and Juliet that came out in 1968 that managed to bring the words of that play to life, but of course that wasn't on a theater stage. The many Shakespeare in the Park performances were the times when Elizabethan text came alive and I found myself emotionally engaged.

Thanks to Scott Miller, I watched a series of four BBC broadcasts that opened my eyes to the historical context of Shakespeare's writing. Especially the plays were written at a time of political upheaval in England. Shakespeare was raised Roman Catholic, but spent most of his adult life in a Protestant England that criminalized Catholicism. The BBC series links the thematic content of many of his plays to the culture and politics of the time. It also places Shakespeare plays in their proper business/mercantile context. Here's the first installment. You can find links to the other three. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuM357xdt7g