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1. England Goes Global

Drake's Circumnavigation Medal. Neil MacGregor uses objects of the time to explore Shakespeare鈥檚 turbulent world. From 2012.

How Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe changed the way Shakespeare's audiences viewed the world and their country's place on it.

For the first time, England was engaging with the whole world.

First in an object-based history series presented by Neil MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum.

Taking artefacts from William Shakespeare's time, he explores how Elizabethan and Jacobean playgoers made sense of the unstable and rapidly changing world in which they lived.

With old certainties shifting around them, in a time of political and religious unrest and economic expansion, Neil asks what the plays would have meant to the public when they were first performed.

He uses carefully selected objects to explore the great issues of the day that preoccupied the public and helped shape the works, and he considers what they can reveal about the concerns and beliefs of Shakespearean England.

Producer: Paul Kobrak

First broadcast on 成人快手 Radio 4 in April 2012.

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15 minutes

Last on

Tue 17 Oct 2023 02:15

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Read a transcript of this programme:聽Shakespeare's Restless World /聽England Goes Global

Broadcasts

  • Mon 16 Apr 2012 13:45
  • Mon 16 Apr 2012 19:45
  • Mon 8 Oct 2012 14:15
  • Mon 9 Mar 2015 14:15
  • Tue 10 Mar 2015 00:15
  • Mon 13 Jun 2016 13:45
  • Mon 16 Apr 2018 14:15
  • Tue 17 Apr 2018 02:15
  • Mon 16 Oct 2023 07:15
  • Mon 16 Oct 2023 12:15
  • Mon 16 Oct 2023 17:15
  • Tue 17 Oct 2023 02:15

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