2011 introduction. Details for 2012 available in the new year.

With a dazzling succession of top-rank productions, daily talks and discussions and visits to places known to Shakespeare, our annual ‘Shakespeare and his World’ provides an incredibly rich experience.

Key ingredients are performances in the two newly opened auditoria in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford, transformed after a three-year building programme. With a commitment to performances of power and intimacy, even the larger space (capacity 1,000) has no seat more than 15 metres from the stage.
A highlight of the season is the ‘lost play’ Cardenio, now accepted as a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher in 1612. By the last performance, in 1723, some text had disappeared. After much archaeological and academic digging and patching, Gregory Doran’s production restores missing scenes. The other RSC productions we see are Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice.

The third and final year of the Bridge Project, which has been bringing together outstanding British and American actors and crew at the Old Vic in London, presents Richard III. Directed by Sam Mendes and with Kevin Spacey in the title role, these are the most sought-after tickets of the year.

Though a replica of the 1599 building as exact as available evidence allows, the reconstructed Globe on Bankside is no mere antiquarian exercise or tourist attraction. Productions here are vital and thrilling, demotic and thoughtful, hilarious and profoundly moving, showing that the authentic environment can enhance the theatrical experience. We see two plays here, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and, to end the tour, All’s Well That Ends Well.

There is another aspect to this tour: the sites in Stratford and London associated with Shakespeare. All are fascinating, some are handsome, others are not attractive (one is now an underground carpark), but they enable the visitor to feel closer to Shakespeare, the man and the writer.

London was where Shakespeare pursued his second career as an actor and playwright, acquired fame, achieved social advancement and made his fortune. But Stratford-upon-Avon, his birthplace, remained his home. When he headed for the metropolis aged around 23, his wife, three children, parents and siblings remained behind, and he returned to them regularly. In London he was only a lodger; he bought the biggest house in Stratford aged 33, and when he died there (aged 52) he may have been retired from the London stage for three or four years. Fortune has been kind to the fabric of Shakespearean Stratford, less so to his London. But in London there are sufficient physical remains and identifiable sites – the footings of two Elizabethan theatres have been revealed in recent years – for an exploration to be rewarding.

The lecturer, Charles Nicholl, is author of The Lodger, acclaimed for bringing the reader closer to Shakespeare than any other historical study, and of The Reckoning, an award-winning study of the death of Christopher Marlowe.