Free Thinking

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The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Shakespeare's life lessons

Shakespeare's Life Lessons

Shakespeare's life lessons

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Shakespeare's life lessons

Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray and Emma Whipday find examples in different dramas.

What does Shakespeare teach us about the ethics of war, about friendships or domestic violence and the power dynamics in a home?

Friendship, domestic violence and power dynamics in the home, or debates about the ethics of war - these are all topics we can find in the dramas of Shakespeare. Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray and Emma Whipday share insights from their research with Lisa Mullen. 

Professor Emma Smith is the author of This is Shakespeare now out in paperback. She has presented the Radio 3 Documentary First Folio Road Trip https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03s4jm7 
An Essay called The Art of Storytelling https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cypjl 
Dr Patrick Gray teaches at Durham University and is the author of Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic and has co-edited Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics 
Dr Emma Whipday teaches at the University of Newcastle and has published Shakespeare's Domestic Tragedies: Violence in the Early Modern Home

You can find a playlist with other discussions about Shakespeare on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hm 
and a podcast series which gives you productions of the plays recorded for radio The Shakespeare Sessions https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0655br3/episodes/downloads 

Producer: Emma Wallace

Image: A First Folio edition of William Shakespeare's plays (1623)
Credit: JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP via Getty Images

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