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Diana Henderson

Reflections on Shakespeare 2016, Part One: Elsinore

By | March 31, 2017 | One Comment

Throwing a good party takes an inordinate amount of work, and Shakespeare commemorations are no different. I’m sure many of the organizers of the myriad events honoring Shakespeare’s death (and more optimistically, 400 years of afterlife) at some point during 2016 thought, “Why did I get myself into this?” Some of their other guests may too have shared a sense of the irony—dare we say overkill?—in making a bigger deal of the death than the 450th birthdate two years prior. Read More

2016 Marks the 500th Anniversary of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice

By | March 29, 2016

MIT’s Global Shakespeares and “The Merchant in Venice” project commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with the first ever on-site performance of The Merchant of Venice in Venice’s 500 year-old Jewish Ghetto. Compagnia de’ Colombari is staging the play as part of the Ghetto Quincentennial. The play, running from 26-31 July 2016 has attracted the interest of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who will be adjudicating a mock trial involving Shylock and Antonio, the rival merchants of the play. Read More