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Shakespeare's Restless World

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Shakespeare's Restless World: 4. Life without Elizabeth

4. Life without Elizabeth

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Shakespeare's Restless World, 4. Life without Elizabeth

The story behind a portrait justifying Elizabeth I's position in the Tudor succession.

Neil MacGregor uses a 1571 painting of Elizabeth I to explore what life was like in Shakespeare’s turbulent world. From 2012.

A portrait was painted in 1571 to justify and celebrate Elizabeth I's position in the Tudor succession.

Yet by the 1590s, with no direct Tudor heir, this image had very different implications in Shakespeare's Restless World.  

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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