Shakespeare and Amateur Performance A Cultural History

From the Hamlet acted on a galleon off Africa to the countless outdoor productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream that now defy each English summer, Shakespeare and Amateur Performance explores the unsung achievements of those outside the theatrical profession who have been determined to do Shakespeare themselves. Based on extensive research in previously unexplored archives, this generously illustrated and lively work of theatre history enriches our understanding of how and why Shakespeare's plays have mattered to generations of rude mechanicals and aristocratic dilettantes alike: from the days of the Theatres Royal to those of the Little Theatre Movement, from the pioneering Winter's Tale performed in eighteenth-century Salisbury to the Merchant of Venice performed by Allied prisoners for their Nazi captors, and from the how-to book which transforms Mercutio into Yankee Doodle to the Napoleonic counterspy who used Richard III as a tool of surveillance.

Introduction; 1. Shakespeare in private; 2. Shakespeare in public; 3. Shakespeare in exile; 4. Shakespeare in the open; Conclusion.

Michael Dobson is Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. He comments regularly on Shakespeare for the BBC, The London Review of Books and for other publications, and he has written programme notes for the RSC, Shakespeare's Globe, the Old Vic, the Sheffield Crucible and Peter Stein. His books include The Making of the National Poet (1992), The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (with Stanley Wells, 2001, winner of the Bainton Prize in 2002), England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (with Nicola Watson, 2002) and Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today (2006). Between 1999 and 2007 he reviewed every major production of a Shakespeare play for Shakespeare Survey.