Travesties of Shakespeare Plays

Travesties of Shakespeare Plays
The Shakespeare Travesty is usually associated with the pantomime tradition of the Victorians, when a popular Shakespeare play-usually Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello or Richard III was parodied in rhymed verse with an occasional song interpolated.

But the travesty tradition began officially in 1810, when it was created as a literary form, with its parody aimed at the voluminous annotations of the 18th Century critical editions of Shakespeare's plays.

Curator John Wolfson will trace the development of travesties of Shakespeare from their origin in the 17th Century to the height of their popularity 150 years ago.