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Roundtable

Speaking of Shakespeare
With Professor Kiernan Ryan    
Of the University of London


Monday, May 23
8:00 PM
                
Why is it that people around the world have long concurred with Emerson’s observation that, compared with other great writers, Shakespeare was “inconceivably wise, the other conceivably”? This question lies at the heart of a new book by Kiernan Ryan, who takes issue with those who prefer to emphasize the ways in which the poet was a man of his age rather than an artist who was recognized by his most admired contemporary as a dramatist whose insights transcended those of his own era and whose poems and plays would be revered “for all time.” A Cambridge graduate who holds the Chair of English Language and Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, Professor Ryan is the author of Shakespeare (a survey of the playwright’s works that first appeared in 1995 and is now in its third edition), Shakespeare: The Last Plays (1989), Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts (2000), and the Penguin Classics edition of King Lear (2015). He has written for a number of periodicals, among them The Guardian, The Independent, and The Times Higher Education Supplement. He has also contributed to arts programming on BBC Radio, and in 2013 he delivered the prestigious F. W. Bateson Memorial Lecture at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 2014 he presented a plenary address at the biennial International Shakespeare Conference in Stratford-upon-Avon. His topic, and the subject of his latest publication, was Shakespeare’s Universality: Here’s Fine Revolution (2015). Copies of the book will be available for purchase. 







Shakespeare NOW!
Monday, May 23, 2016 8:00 PM
Roundtable