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Front Row

Hamlet and As You Like It at Shakespeare's Globe, Mysterious Marginalia, Morris Dance Music

Duration: 30 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LW

Available for over a year

Shakespeare's Globe found itself in a storm of controversy when Artistic Director Emma Rice left the theatre amid objections to her use of modern lighting and amplification. In her stead the actor Michelle Terry was appointed and her first two productions, As You Like It and Hamlet, have just opened. Terry takes the title role in Hamlet but the approach is a resolutely ensemble one, with casting across gender, disability and ethnicity. Are these productions a radical new approach or are they back-to-basics Shakespeare? Critics Kate Maltby and Susannah Clapp give their verdicts.

The marginalia in the philosopher John Stewart Mill's 1700 volume library is being digitised, revealing an unknown side of this reticent man. We look at the history of marginalia, and consider what our own attitudes to writing on books reveal about their changing significance. Biographer Kathryn Hughes and Bill Sherman, a historian of reading, discuss writing in the margins - and confess to their own guilty scribblings. And...a few weeks into her new job Dundee library assistant Georgia Grainger discovered a secret code in some library books - what lay behind it, and why did her tweet about it go viral?

Will Pound is a harmonica and melodeon virtuoso - and dancer. His latest CD, 'Through the Seasons', ranges through the year and the country, from the Cotswolds to Shetland. The album, and his show, is a celebration of the variety of Morris and other folk dance music. Will tells Stig Abell about rapper music (in the pub not the 'hood), clog percussion, and the melodies Border and Cotswold Morris. He demonstrates, playing live in the studio. And there's a special tune for the Royal Wedding, one Meghan could skip down the aisle to.

Presenter: Stig Abell
Producer: Julian May. Show less

Contributors

Presenter:
Stig Abell
Interviewed Guest:
Kate Maltby
Interviewed Guest:
Susannah Clapp
Interviewed Guest:
Kathryn Hughes
Interviewed Guest:
Bill Sherman
Interviewed Guest:
Georgina Grainger
Interviewed Guest:
Will Pound
Performer:
Will Pound
Producer:
Julian May

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