Shakespeare in Ten Acts

Four hundred years after Shakespeare’s death, it is difficult to imagine a time when he was not considered a genius. But those 400 years have seen his plays banished and bowdlerized, faked and forged, traded and translated, re-mixed and re-cast. Shakespeare’s story is not one of a steady rise to fame; it is a tale of set-backs and sea-changes that have made him the cultural icon he is today. Each performance discussed here holds up a mirror to the era in which it was performed. The first st...