The Essay

400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. This time, award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director David Hare chooses a speech by Macbeth in Act 5, Scene 3 of the play.

David tells us how Shakespeare perfected his gift for the lone monologue to help reveal what is going on inside a character's head. In Act 5, Scene 3 of Macbeth, the lead character waits for news of an English army which has been assembled in an attempt to destroy him. As he waits, he gives a speech in which he thinks about what life will be like if he makes it to old age. It's a speech which moves David. He ponders what makes the play so hard to perform, in an essay which takes us from Quentin Tarantino to Philip Larkin.

Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol

400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. This time, the author, curator and broadcaster Professor Islam Issa chooses a speech from Act 2, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar. It's a speech which he says is full of masterful language, can leave us with surprising take-homes about everyday life, and has a fascinating performance history.

In an essay which takes us from the Roman Empire to Robben Island prison, Islam shows us how much a short speech from early in the play can teach us about humanity and every day life. Drawing on reflections and quotes from Islamic scholar and mystic Jalal al-Din Rūmi and the father of the Japanese chanoyu (the tea ceremony) Sen no Rikyu, Islam reveals how a passage from a play which is over 400 years old might say something about mindfulness in the present moment.

Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol

400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. In the second essay of this series, Michelle Terry, actor and artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe, chooses a speech by Rosalind - a character she played.

Rosalind appears in As You Like It - a play which was first printed in the 1623 Folio. In the scene Michelle selects, Rosalind is disguised as Ganymede and is speaking to her estranged love Orlando in the Forest of Arden. She tests his love for her by posing as a love doctor and offering to cure him of his love.

Michelle tells us how she first found the part a challenge but when she delved into the text and into the Folio, she found subtle clues which revealed an "intelligent and now liberated woman tumbling her way through long sentences." She reveals how when she played Rosalind, she learned to trust Shakespeare and to trust the words on the page.

Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol

400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. In the first essay of this series, award-winning theatre and film director Sir Richard Eyre chooses a speech from his favourite Shakespeare play: King Lear.

Richard's choice is a speech by Lear from Act 5, Scene 3 of the play. At this point, Lear and his daughter Cordelia are reunited but are about to be dragged off to prison. Richard reveals why he finds Lear's words so moving - after sound and fury, there's quiet: "birds in a cage" and "gilded butterflies." Richard tells us when he first encountered Shakespeare and about when he first felt ready to direct King Lear. He explores how directors have to pick and choose between the Folio version and the Quarto text of the play. He reflects on the power of Lear and Cordelia's relationship and how it evolves through the play.

Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol

An ancient Japanese Buddhist ritual which involves a red baby bib, a small statue and water, has been taken up by women wanting to have some way of marking a miscarriage and the life not lived. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a psychiatrist and writer doing research at the University of East Anglia. Her essay looks at the language we use for unborn children who die and at what we can learn about mourning rituals from the work of the nineteenth century French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to modern services performed by Rabbis, in cathedrals and in peoples' back gardens.

Producer: Ruth Watts

The trial of sisters begging on the streets of South London led to donations sent in by Victorian newspaper readers and an investigation by the Mendicity Society. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen, from Newcastle University, unearthed this story of the Avery girls in the archives and his essay explores the way attitudes to former slaves and to the reform of criminals affected the sisters' sentencing.

Producer: Ruth Watts

An 8 year old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Len Johnson, barred from fighting title bouts, had his career stopped short by a ‘colour bar’, but went onto fight against racism outside the ring. A campaign in Manchester is seeking to erect a statue to commemorate his success both in boxing and activism, which led to the ending of a ban in local pubs which had meant he was being refused service. His story of resistance is explored in this Essay from New Generation Thinker Shirin Hirsch, who is based at Manchester Metropolitan University and the People's History Museum.

Producer: Ruth Thomson.

Shirin Hirsch is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to share their research as radio. You can hear more from her in a Free Thinking discussion about May Day Rituals and you can find a whole series of features, essays and discussions with New Generation Thinkers drawn from the scheme, which has been running for more than a decade, on the Free Thinking programme website.

From "dull" to "feeble-minded" - the qualities associated with stupidity altered during the Victorian period alongside changes to schooling and education policies. Dr Louise Creechan, from Durham University, looks at the findings of the 1861 Newcastle Commission and at a range of characters in novels. We hear about the sibling rivalry of Maggie and Tom Tulliver and different ideas about male and female capabilities expressed in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and ideas about education and teaching in Charles' Dickens Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) and Hard Times (1854).

Producer: Luke Mulhall

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio. You can hear Louise Creechan discussing her research in episodes of Free Thinking called How We Read https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cgks and Teaching and Inspiration https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00169jh

An ancient Japanese Buddhist ritual which involves a red baby bib, a small statue and water, has been taken up by women wanting to have some way of marking a miscarriage and the life not lived. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a psychiatrist and writer doing research at the University of East Anglia. Her essay looks at the language we use for unborn children who die and at what we can learn about mourning rituals from the work of the 19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to modern services performed by Rabbis, in cathedrals and in peoples' back gardens.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Sabina Dosani is one of the ten New Generation Thinkers chosen in 2022 to work with BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share their research. You can hear her in Free Thinking discussion episodes called Mental Health, Stepmothers and Depicting AIDS in Drama. All episodes of Free Thinking and this Essay series from New Generation Thinkers are available on BBC Sounds and to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts.