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Shakespeare's Restless World

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Shakespeare's Restless World: 1. England Goes Global

1. England Goes Global

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Shakespeare's Restless World, 1. England Goes Global

Assessing the impact of Sir Francis Drake's Circumnavigation Medal.

Drake's Circumnavigation Medal. Neil MacGregor uses objects of the time to explore Shakespeare’s turbulent world. From 2012.

How Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe changed the way Shakespeare's audiences viewed the world and their country's place on it. 

For the first time, England was engaging with the whole world.

First in an object-based history series presented by Neil MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum.    

Taking artefacts from William Shakespeare's time, he explores how Elizabethan and Jacobean playgoers made sense of the unstable and rapidly changing world in which they lived.

With old certainties shifting around them, in a time of political and religious unrest and economic expansion, Neil asks what the plays would have meant to the public when they were first performed. 

He uses carefully selected objects to explore the great issues of the day that preoccupied the public and helped shape the works, and he considers what they can reveal about the concerns and beliefs of Shakespearean England.

Producer: Paul Kobrak

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2012.

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Factual: History

Neil MacGregor uncovers the stories 20 objects tell us about Shakespeare's world.

Making a selection of objects from the British Museum and collections across the UK, Neil MacGregor uncovers the stories they tell about Shakespeare's world.

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