I was delighted to talk to Rhodri Lewis, author of Shakespeare’s Tragic Art. We discussed Shakespeare’s most under appreciated plays, the best films, how to teach Shakespeare, humanism, personae, Frank Kermode, the future of the humanities, being supervised by John Carey, A.C. Bradley, what we have learned about Francis Bacon, and more. There’s a transcript below and you can also watch the whole conversation on YouTube if you wish. We also covered Rhodri’s love of Pevsner architectural guides.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:21 Shakespeare's best and worst plays

00:03:14 Performing Shakespeare

00:07:33 Pragmatism

00:09:13 Early experiences with Shakespeare

00:13:52 Teaching Shakespeare

00:17:08 Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet

00:19:38 Which five critical works?

00:23:37 Francis Bacon

00:31:31 What have we learned about Shakespeare?

00:34:32 Too much Shakespeare?

00:41:57 Tragedy

00:49:04 Humanism

00:54:00 Kermode

01:03:59 Quickfire questions

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