Shakespeare anniversaries celebrated
In its 75th year, the Shakespeare Institute hosted the 40th iteration of the International Shakespeare Conference, celebrated at the New Place
In its 75th year, the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute hosted the 40th iteration of the International Shakespeare Conference, and these two notable anniversaries came together at a party held on the site of Shakespeare’s family home, New Place, ten years after the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust redesigned and redisplayed the site.
In this idyllic garden, Shakespeare Institute alumni conversed with the invited crème de la crème of Shakespeare studies worldwide, and consumed – fittingly, given that the ISC’s topic was on this occasion ‘Shakespeare, Pleasure and Delight’ – both a pleasurable commemorative cake and some quite adequately delightful prosecco.
The cake was cut by the current Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Professor Michael Dobson, and his two predecessors, Professor Peter Holland and Professor Kate McLuskie, and speeches were made by Professor Dobson, by Dr Manuela Perteghella – Stratford’s MP, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Shakespeare, of which the Shakespeare Institute is the secretariat – and by the Director of Research for the College of Arts and Law, Professor Fiona de Londras.
In between chatting about the many scholarly achievements of the Institute during its first 75 years, and comparing notes about the plenaries, seminars and other events of the conference (which included the launch of the 4th series of the Arden Shakespeare editions, of which the Institute’s Professor Tiffany Stern is a general editor, and a splendid performance of Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle by the all-male acting troupe of Shakespeare’s old grammar school, Edward’s Boys), the assembled partygoers noted only two regrettable absences from the occasion. These were former PhD student, former Fellow and former Director of the Shakespeare Institute Professor Sir Stanley Wells - who at 96 had already set out by rail towards the following week’s World Shakespeare Congress in Verona - and honorary fellow and Honorary President of the Shakespeare Institute’s 75th Anniversary Celebrations Sir Kenneth Branagh, who was detained that afternoon at a rehearsal for his excellent performance as Lopakhin in the RSC’s production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. We saved them some cake.
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