English Renaissance plays
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century.
8 episodes
Episodes in this category also belong to the following categories:
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals
18 April 2019
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay
Elizabethan Revenge
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why revenge tragedy was so popular with Elizabethan theatre goers, from Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
18 June 2009
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders, Janet Clare
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.
28 December 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai
Lear
Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.
28 February 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.
1 October 2020
Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
The Tempest
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.
14 November 2013
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones
Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great comedies of world literature in which love and desire in Illyria sit uneasily alongside thwarted dreams and compromise.
28 December 2023
Featuring: Pascale Aebischer, Michael Dobson, Emma Smith