Let's Talk Shakespeare: When Did Shakespeare go to London?

For the third episode of Let’s Talk Shakespeare, I asked “When Did Shakespeare Go to London?”. There are some lost years in Shakespeare's life, one of which is the period from around 1585 until 1592 when the first reference to him as a playwright appears in print. In this episode I talk to our guests about all the myths and stories that are told around why Shakespeare set out for London, we talk about how he would have travelled and where he would have stayed, but the idea of him as a "literary commuter", travelling between London and Stratford for most of his life.

This 1697 map of London Bridge by John Norden shows how London Bridge would have looked when Shakespeare made his way across the river from his lodgings on silver street to the playhouses This weeks guests are:

Professor Stanley Wells, Honorary President of the SBT 

Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute 

Dr Elizabeth Dollimore, Outreach and Primary Learning Manager a the SBT 

Dr Anjna Chouhan, Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at the SBT 

Dr Tara Hamling, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern history at Birmingham University 

Madeleine Cox, Reading Room and Public Services Coordinator at the SBT

You can find the show notes for this episode on our blog: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/when-did-shakespeare-go-london/