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  3. Television

  4. Michael Wood: In Search of Shakespeare

TELEVISION

Michael Wood: In Search of Shakespeare

Series: In Search of Shakespeare
4.6
(62)
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Episodes
4
Rating
TVPG
Year
2005
Language
English
Publisher
PBS

About

Using new evidence from spies' reports, local archives and even a coded prison diary, Michael Wood uncovers the dark side of Shakespeare's world, tracing William's early days, his schooling, his father's shady business deals and the dark secret that ruined the family. Finally, Wood untangles the riddle of William's shotgun marriage, which left him a teenage father with decidedly slim career prospects.

Related Subjects

  • Biography

Episodes

1. A Time of Revolution

1h

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Using new evidence from spies' reports, local archives and even a coded prison diary, Michael Wood uncovers the dark side of Shakespeare's world, tracing William's early days, his schooling, his father's shady business deals and the dark secret that ruined the family. Finally, Wood untangles the riddle of William's shotgun marriage, which left him a teenage father with decidedly slim career prospects.

2. The Lost Years

1h

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Michael Wood explains how Shakespeare became a star of the London stage, and uncovers a tale of religious conflict behind his lost years. Wood travels with the Royal Shakespeare Company, who perform the plays in a Tudor inn yard as Shakespare's company did, and using Tudor maps and remarkable Victorian photos, he brings Shakespeare's first London home back to life. He also follows Shakespeare's great rival, Christopher Marlowe, on his fateful journey by river to Deptford and the murder that left 29-year-old William the star of Elizabethan London.

3. The Duty of Poets

1h

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In the third episode, Wood uncovers Shakespeare's rise to fame and fortune in Elizabethan London. Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream fuel this rise, but tragedy strikes as his son Hamnet dies at the age of 11. Plunged into a mid-life crisis, he falls in love with a teenage nobleman, has a passionate affair with a mysterious married woman and is charged with assault. Meanwhile, his theatre company builds the Globe and becomes caught up in the rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. In the midst of it all, Shakespeare creates some of the greatest characters in world literature.

4. For All Time

1h

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In the final episode, Michael Wood examines Shakespeare's life in the era of King James I. He unearths Shakespeare's neighborhood in London and visits the current queen's robe-makers for evidence of Shakespeare's role in the royal coronation. Shakespeare's world is transformed in 1605 by the Gunpowder Plot, a Jacobean September 11. The entertainment industry responded, and Shakespeare contributed Macbeth, a daring play about the murder of a king. Finally, Wood follows Shakespeare back to Warwickshire and looks at the riddle of Shakespeare's will and its strange bequest to his wife, Anne.

Extended Details

  • SeriesIn Search of Shakespeare
  • Closed CaptionsEnglish