Taking Issue with Shakespeare

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

BBC Radio 4 LW

Taking Issue with Shakespeare: Episode 5

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - Taking Issue with Shakespeare, Episode 5

Shakespeare on contemporary issues, contemporary issues on Shakespeare.

Might Shakespeare help resolve  challenging contemporary issues? Major public figures in conversation with Emma Smith. Today, Michael Gove on equality, levelling up and King Lear.

Major public figures, in conversation with Professor Emma Smith, explore whether Shakespeare might help us resolve some challenging contemporary issues.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, talks about the fundamental sense of a shared humanity which King Lear’s suffering brings to him in this greatest of tragedies, set in a pagan world.  

Emma, in turn, points out that the mockery of Malvolio’s aspirational attempts at social climbing in Twelfth Night, a play set in a world closer to that of Shakespeare himself, suggests that achieving the levelling up agenda may be harder than expected.  

In spite of frequent claims that Shakespeare is a small-l liberal, Michael Gove makes a compelling case for Shakespeare as a small-c conservative.

With contributions from Professor Paul Prescott

Producer: Beaty Rubens 
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio.

Professor Emma Smith, sharp, smart, witty and wise invites a guest or two to discuss Shakespeare, 400 years on from the publication of the First Folio

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Taking Issue with Shakespeare

Episode 5

Genres

Series

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4