Course Detail

Age 7-10 & 11-14

Cost £165

Early Modern London was a thriving and dynamic cradle of innovation, conflict, religion and thinking, captured imaginatively in literature by a number of famous playwrights, including the ‘Bard of Avon’: Shakespeare himself.

In this course, we will be exploring the world of England’s bustling capital in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries, through the writing and performances of actors and playwrights. We’ll also explore artefacts, paintings and eye-witness accounts of the time and see through the eyes of a very diverse population, including labourers, soldiers, princesses and alchemists, discovering for ourselves just how powerfully London burst onto the world stage at this time.

Tutor

Will Fordham has been teaching the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries since 2014 and has, more recently, informed his love of the Early Modern period through attending and participating in an online lecture and seminar programme with Lancaster University (‘Penshurst Place and the Sidney Family of Writers’) and King’s College London (‘Shakespeare: Print and Performance’), parts of which he has adapted for teaching at a secondary-school level. Will enjoys exploring the historical backdrop of London in the 16^th and 17^th centuries through literature and investigating modes of performance in court masques of the early Jacobean period.