Shakespeare: Staging the World

This lovely and informative book presents the London of 1612 through a historical and anthropological lens, using scores of artifacts to demonstrate what may have influenced Shakespeare—and his many characters—in their own time. Combining catalogue text (to accompany an exhibition at the British Museum) and literary criticism, coauthors Bate (Soul of the Age), provost of Oxford’s Worcester College, and Thornton (The Scholar in His Study), curator of Renaissance collections at the British Museum, aim to “create a dialogue between Shakespeare’s imaginary worlds and the material objects of the real world of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.” The first chapter depicts Shakespeare’s London through diaries of locals and visitors to the “world city,” suggesting a parallel to modern day London as it prepares for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympics. The book further illuminates the changing monarchy and the growth from England to “Great Britain” with flags and coins, and shows the longstanding influence of the Roman Empire over the burgeoning British Empire’s sculptures and paintings. Though the book can feel disjointed due to the numerous artifacts and rather dry prose, there is a hearty dappling of Shakespeare quotations among the photographs and words to draw the objects together and more directly into the Bard’s world. (June)