24 April 2014 - Shakespeare's 450th birthday
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Shakespeare's 450th birthday: Now all the world is his stage
Jonathan Bate (The Telegraph)
The 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth was marked by a set of Royal Mail stamps, a gala performance by the recently established Royal Shakespeare Company, a new biography by A L Rowse and a rollicking Anthony Burgess novel about his love life. Fifty years on, this seems like a modest commemoration. It was the Beatles and Disney’s Mary Poppins that were making the cultural running in 1964.
This week, by contrast, it is a racing certainty that every major news outlet in the world will have something to say about the Bard of Avon’s 450th birthday, which falls on Wednesday. And this is only prologue to the wall-to-wall programme of celebrations, productions, exhibitions and documentaries being planned for 2016, the quatercentenary of his death. Shakespeare has become a global icon, not merely a local heritage product whose presumed birthday conveniently coincides with St George’s Day.
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Global Shakespeare
Staff (BBC News)
William Shakespeare is the UK's greatest cultural icon, according to the results of an international survey released to mark the 450th anniversary of his birth.
Five thousand young adults in India, Brazil, Germany, China and the USA were asked to name a person they associated with contemporary UK arts and culture.
Shakespeare was the most popular response, with an overall score of 14%.
The result emerged from a wider piece of research for the British Council.
The Queen and David Beckham came second and third respectively. Other popular responses included JK Rowling, Adele, The Beatles, Paul McCartney and Elton John.
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Celebrations
Maev Kennedy (The Guardian)
Most adults have only the haziest idea of who St George was or when his feast day falls, but one English town is preparing to celebrate 23 April with gusto; not for the sake of the country's patron saint, but for the glover's son born in Stratford-upon-Avon 450 years ago on about that date – the founder of the town's tourism fortunes, William Shakespeare.
While English Heritage is encouraging people to flock to St George's events at their properties this weekend – despite a survey by the organisation revealing that only one in five people had any plans to mark the day – in the Warwickshire town it is one of the most important dates in the calendar.
Shakespeare was baptised on 26 April and died on 23 April. The town has celebrated his birthday for centuries but the plans are more elaborate this year, with a giant horse-drawn birthday cake, fireworks, a fancy-dress parade and a procession led by the pupils of his old school to lay flowers on his grave at Holy Trinity church.
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Traces of Shakespeare's England
Jenny Scott (BBC News)
The inns, brothels, battlefields and towns of England are sprinkled throughout William Shakespeare's plays. On the Bard's 450th birthday, take a tour of the "sceptred isle" that inspired his works - and look at how the locations have changed.
From Birmingham to Milton Keynes - Shakespeare's legacy exists far beyond the confines of his Stratford-upon-Avon birthplace. Many English locations that appear in his plays or are closely connected to them can still be visited, although they are often now drastically different places.
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Leicester
Go to Leicester in search of its Blue Boar Inn and, chances are, you may be left feeling a little disorientated.
Once, the Blue Boar was a famous stopping-off point for travellers. It was, so legend has it, one of the last places Richard III rested his head before meeting his fate at Bosworth...
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24 April 2014 - Shakespeare's 450th birthday, La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), avril 2014. Consulté le 27/12/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/key-story/archives-revue-de-presse-2014/24-april-2014-shakespeare-s-450th-birthday