Irony and ambiguity
Presenter/director John Barton guides members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a discussion and dramatization of Shakespeare's use of irony and ambiguity. Barton analyzes some of Shakespeare's texts with the actors, and demonstrates how understan...
Poetry and hidden poetry
Presenter/director John Barton leads members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a discussion of Shakespeare's use of poetry and hidden poetry in seemingly unpoetic lines. Barton and the actors demonstrate how polysyllables trip easily off the tongu...
Rehearsing the text
Using a scene from Twelfth Night, this program helps us search through the text for Shakespeare's clues to character, language, and staging; we see how richly a careful reading of Shakespeare is repaid. The program analyzes text and subtext, how the...
Language and character
Presenter/director John Barton guides members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a discussion and dramatization of Shakespeare's use of language to define character, and his characters' use of heightened language to achieve their intentions. Explor...
Speaking Shakespearean verse
Members of the Royal Shakespeare Company discuss approaches to the problem of speaking verse in drama and demonstrate how the RSC works on a text in rehearsal. Taking part are actors Ian McKellen, Alan Howard, Jane Lapotaire, Michael Pennington, Dav...
Preparing to perform Shakespeare
Members of the Royal Shakespeare Company present a workshop before a television studio audience to demonstrate how they rehearse and learn to perform Shakespeare's plays. In this masterclass on Shakespeare, director John Barton works on a scene from...
The two traditions
Presenter/director John Barton guides members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a discussion and dramatization of Shakespeare's use of language, meter, and verse. Barton and the actors address and analyze the question of how to understand Shakespe...
Using the verse
Presenter/director John Barton guides members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a discussion and dramatization of Shakespeare's use of blank verse. In the course of trying out different stresses, the actors discover how Shakespeare uses antithesis...
“This Earth, This Realm, This England”
Has any single person shaped English more than William Shakespeare? This program uses unparalleled access to some of the greatest English texts, including the first English dictionary and a rare first folio of Shakespeare's plays, to illustrate the ...
The Battle for the Language of the Bible
In late-medieval England, English quietly ousted French in law and government - but the move to make it God's language meant bloodshed. This program looks at the battle for a Bible in English, a struggle with huge impact on the language itself. Dram...