BUFVC Search
Current Search
Previous Searches
A significant character in Shakespeare’s history plays, Falstaff takes centre stage - getting up to mischief and chasing potential loves in the "Merry Wives of Windsor". In this lecture, Professor Emma...
Podcast. In this edition, Professor Emma Smith talks about her podcast ‘Approaching Shakespeare’ (qv) and her books ‘This is Shakespeare’, ‘Shakespeare’s First Folio’ and ‘Portable Magic.'
Following the loss of England’s French territories, Henry VI is plagued by power struggles, insubordination and threats to his monarchy. Part of a trilogy of plays, Emma Smiths asks whether it’s still...
King Cymberline goes to war in protest over Roman demands for England to pay a tribute. Having won the war and captured his enemies, Cymberliine decides to pay the tribute despite his victory. In this...
Married to Bertram, who chooses to go to war rather than recognise her as his wife; Helena shows equal determination when he challenges her to become pregnant by him. Bertram is undone when Helena triumphs...
In this edition Emma Smith lectures on the spoiler-chorus, in an already-too-familiar play.
The fact that father and son share the same name in Hamlet is used to investigate the play’s nostalgia, drawing on biographical criticism and the religious and political history of early modern England.
This lecture takes up a detail from Shakespeare’s late Roman tragedy Coriolanus to ask about the representation of character, the use of sources and the genre of tragedy.
This lecture on The Merchant of Venice discusses the ways the play’s personal relationships are shaped by models of financial transaction, using the casket scenes as a central example.
Emma Smith uses evidence of early reception and from more recent productions to discuss the question of whether Katherine is tamed at the end of the play.
Learning on Screen