Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture: “How Shakespeare Made History”

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This was a lecture given by Alan Stewart on 21 April 2008.

British history is unthinkable without Shakespeare. His series of kings—Cymbeline, Lear, Macbeth, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VIII—are more familiar and more compelling than the mythical and historical figures on whom they are based. But when Shakespeare created his kings, he was entering into a crucial Renaissance debate: how to re-make British history to meet the new demands of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.

Lecturer: Alan Stewart is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of biographies of Francis Bacon, Philip Sidney, and most recently The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I (2003). His next book is a study of Shakespeare’s Letters.