The 2010 Wickham Lecture:
Ted Hughes and Shakespeare

Tuesday 4 May, 5.30 pm
Wickham Theatre, Cantocks Close, Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UP | map

Presented by Jonathan Bate
Jonathan Bate is a well-known Shakespeare expert who is now writing a literary life of Ted Hughes. Throughout his career, Hughes was passionate about Shakespeare, an obsession that culminated in the book Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. Though derided by professional Shakespeareans on its publication, it now looks prophetic of the turn towards an interest in religion in much recent work on Shakespeare.

Jonathan Bate's lecture will reassess Hughes as a reader of Shakespeare, while also showing how the Shakespearean example led Hughes to seek his own career as a dramatic writer, first through radio plays and then in his extraordinary collaborations with Peter Brook and finally the acclaimed translations of the last phase of his career.