Скачать или смотреть Exhibition marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death ++REPLAY++

(21 Apr 2016) LEAD-IN
Shakespeare in Ten Acts is a new exhibition at the British Library to mark the 400th anniversary of The Bard's death.
It provides a unique insight into the playwright's life and character, along with memorabilia associated with some of the most famous Shakespearean actors and actresses.

STORY-LINE
This is a rareity the British Library is proud to have on display.
It's the first publication of Hamlet from 1603.
Just three years earlier Shakespeare had revealed his first performance of his most famous tragedy.
It was at the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the River Thames.
Here on a 1600 map of London, you can even see the Globe across the Thames from St. Paul's church.
No playwright is without a critic, and right next to Hamlet is the first known review of the play to be published.
The review comments on Romeo and Juliet: "The younger sort takes delight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis...but Hamlet pleases the wiser sort."
It seems little has changed in four centuries.
You can even see a drawing on a map of Shakespeare's first playhouse in Blackfriars.
Despite all this very little of what actually belonged to Shakespeare is left to us across 400 years, but lying inside one glass case are the deeds of purchase for his theatres.
The British Library says one of the signatories is actually the hand of Shakespeare.
It is easy to imagine the excitement he felt as he and colleagues including dramatist Ben Johnson signed for possession of the Globe.
Also on show is a lute and a four hundred year old manuscript with music and the words of a song from the Tempest.
The British Library says this exhibition looks to cast new light on William Shakespeare the man, and how he became a cultural icon.
One of the treasures here is the skull used in Hamlet by actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1899.
The skull scene from Hamlet has made Yorick one of the most famous of Shakespeare's characters.
This engraved human skull was given to Bernhardt by Victor Hugo, the author of Les Miserables.
According to the British Library's lead curator Zoe Wilcox "In 1660 when the theatres reopened after the Civil War companies performed kind of key scenes from their favourite plays sometimes and the gravedigger scene in Hamlet was one of the short comic scenes, or drolls was very popular."
But the Hamlet we know today is not the same as the one published and held by the library as part of this exhibition, according to Wilcox.
Even the play's most famous quote: "To be, or not to be, that is the question."
Wilcox says: "That first one is very different from the Hamlet that we normally see performed today. It's much, much shorter and it contains the line: "To be or not to be, aye there's the point." So a bit different to the famous line that we always quote."
Shakespeare was a well known dramatist of the time, but catapulted to international fame after the famous actor David Garrick held a Shakespeare Jubilee.
The British Library says that Jubilee in Stratford Upon Avon gave Shakespeare international fame and cemented him as the most accomplished writer and dramatist in English and in England.
Despite the illumination all these objects confer, the one thing no-one is certain about is what Shakespeare actually looked like.
A screen at the Library shows various portraits that claim his likeness.
What is thought to be the best likeness of Shakespeare is on the the very first folio produced by the dramatist's contemporary Ben Johnson and other members of his acting company.
Perhaps a reason why we remember Shakespeare so well is that his private life is an open book.


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