BawdyWORKS: an unforgettable Shakespearience

Shortly after Shakespeare’s death, the playwright Ben Jonson praised his deceased rival, declaring: “He was not of an age, but for all time!” History has proven Jonson right. Shakespeare’s plays have held the stage for more than four hundred years, and today reach the stage in greater numbers and in more places around the world than ever before. And yet, William Shakespeare the man lived in one amazing age, and in one small patch of England, and the story of what his writing means today begins in England and in London.

In BawdyWORKS we’ll read Shakespeare’s plays and poems in the places where Shakespeare lived, acted, wrote, and loved. We’ll visit archeological sites in London, where researchers are learning about theatres where Shakespeare walked the stage when he came to the city as an aspiring actor, and we’ll study about Stratford-upon-Avon to learn about the ancient folk traditions Shakespeare grew up with in the Warwickshire countryside. We’ll learn about how print-shop technology shaped the texts we have today, and about how the laws and customs of Elizabethan London fashioned Shakespeare’s London audiences and plays he composed for them.

While we’re exploring the past by visiting libraries, museums and historical sites like Hampton Court Palace, we’ll always be connected to the artistic vitality of England and London–one of the world’s most vibrant and global cities, where among other sites we will visit the Globe Theatre, build at the site Shakespeare’s original Globe.

If you love the language and imaginative power of Shakespeare’s works, and if you’re interested in how the revolutionary age in which Shakespeare lived is still with us today, then there’s no better way than BawdyWORKS to get to know the works of the most famous poet and playwright in the English language, and the amazing world of the English Renaissance.