A Kind of Character in thy Life

Professor Peter Holland from the University of Notre Dame gives the 2010 Sam Wanamaker Fellowship Lecture.

When the Duke in Measure for Measure tells Angelo that he has ‘a kind of character in thy life’, he links it to history: ‘to th'observer [it] doth thy history / Fully unfold’. If for us history is the grand narrative across nations and across time, for Shakespeare it was individualised, the story of characters inscribed onto and through lives.

Shakespeare’s own life, the History of William Shakespeare, and the ways in which we have told and retold that history might offer a new perspective through which the modes in which Shakespeare’s histories tell their very different stories can be rethought.

The annual Sam Wanamaker Lecture was founded in 1995. Each year, a leading Shakespeare scholar is invited to give a public talk to complement the work at the Globe.

Professor Holland’s lecture will complement the Kings and Rogues plays chosen for the Globe Theatre season