Who Was Shakespeare?

Shakespeare: The Complete Works

In this thirty-nine part course, Professor John McRae takes us through the complete works of Shakespeare, beginning with Henry VI, and ending with Two Noble Kinsmen. We begin with an introduction to Shakespeare himself, thinking about him as both a man and a construct. After this, we go through each of Shakespeare's works, one-by-one. Along the way, we consider the evolution of Shakespeare’s style and thematic focuses.

Who Was Shakespeare?

We begin with by considering what we know (and more importantly, don’t know) about Shakespeare, focusing on: (i) what little we do know about Shakespeare’s life, (ii) the other contenders for the authorship of Shakespeare’s works, like Christopher Marlowe and the Duke of Pembroke, (iii) deconstructing Shakespeare as a construct in order to look at him as a great experimenter and a person, and (iv) how many plays Shakespeare wrote.