Front Row on Shakespeare

Last night BBC Radio 4's 'Front Row', presented by Mark Lawson, examined recent literature on Shakespeare, and the 'dramatic increase of knowledge' about the playwright. Lawson spoke to the actor Michael Pennington (performer of the solo Sweet William show, who reckons that he has spent 20,000 hours of his life reciting the Bard's words on stage), Charles Nicholl (author of The Lodger : Shakespeare on Silver Street), James Shapiro (whose 1599 'is a remarkable freeze-frame' of Shakespeare's life in that crucial year), Germaine Greer (author of Shakespeare's Wife, about Anne Hathaway), the director Greg Doran (who discussed the lost play Cardenio), Professor Gary Taylor (whose recent work claims that much of Macbeth was written by Thomas Middleton), and J.L. Carrell (author of the bestselling The Shakespeare Secret, 'Stratford's answer to The Da Vinci Code').

You can Listen Again to the programme for the next six days.