Shakespeare before Shakespeare: politics, justice and power in early modern Warwickshire

Hosted by the Centre for West Midlands History Research Seminar, University of Birmingham.

Speaker: Dr Cathryn Enis

Focussing on the pursuit of Edward Arden and his show trial in the Guildhall in London, Cathryn Enis looks at these events in the context of Arden’s special connection to Warwickshire.  She discusses how Arden’s life and death became a cautionary tale for those opposing the Elizabethan Protestant reformation, how his story unsettled the cultural history and social structures of sixteenth-century Warwickshire, and also became an international scandal. Cathryn considers whether the historiography developed in the centuries after Elizabeth’s death was designed to minimise such events and what this means for how we connect local and national history.

This seminar draws on material from Shakespeare before Shakespeare: Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire and the Elizabethan State, (OUP, 2020), co-authored with Professor Glyn Parry (University of Roehampton)