2011 Sam Wanamaker Fellowship Lecture ‘Bible Bable’: Shakespeare and the King James Version 7 June 2011 Graham Holderness, Professor of English at the University of Hertfordshire, will give the 2011 Sam Wanamaker Fellowship Lecture at Shakespeare’s Globe in London at 7pm on Thursday 14 June, as part of Globe Education’s summer events season, The Heard Word: Pulpit vs Playhouse. The lecture, ‘Bible Bable’: Shakespeare and the King James Version will consider why The King James Bible, completed 400 years ago, and The Works of Shakespeare, published in 1623, are so strongly linked together in the popular imagination, even though they appear to have had no historical connection. As a member of the Kings Men, Shakespeare in 1611 was a court actor and dramatist; and the new translation of the Bible was initiated as well as authorized by James himself. The translators were present when Shakespeare’s plays were performed at court, and Shakespeare listened to their sermons. Yet a cultural Berlin wall seems to have separated the worlds of pulpit and playhouse in which these twin masterpieces were generated. This has not stopped readers and writers of fiction from speculating imaginatively about how Shakespeare might have got involved in the translation of the King James Bible. The lecture will, in Professor Holderness’s words, “explore the underlying reasons why the two books are continually, though not always rationally, interconnected.”
The evening will conclude with a performance by Globe actors of Wholly Writ, a playlet written by Professor Holderness, which explores the relationship between Shakespeare and the King James Bible in fictional form.
The annual Sam Wanamaker Fellowship Lecture is given in honour of the American actor, director, and producer who founded the project to rebuild Shakespeare’s Globe. Sam died in 1993 after 23 years of tireless campaigning, advancing research into the appearance of the original Globe and planning its reconstruction. The Fellowship Lecture is part of a programme of events taking place at Shakespeare’s Globe this th
summer to celebrate the 400 anniversary of the King James Bible. Other highlights include Diarmaid MacCulloch’s examination of the life of the great English reformer Thomas Cranmer in a lecture on Wednesday 31 August presented in association with Southwark Cathedral.
The 2011 theatre season, The Word is God, runs at Shakespeare’s Globe until 2 October. Booking is open now at www.shakespearesglobe.com
ENDS Further information and images from Eleanor Lovegrove at Shakespeare’s Globe Press Office on +44 (0)20 7902 1468, eleanor.l@shakespearesglobe.com 2011 Sam Wanamaker Fellowship Lecture 7pm, Tuesday 14June 2011 at Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Bible Babel’: Shakespeare and the King James Version Professor Graham Holderness of the University of Hertfordshire looks at the relationship between Shakespeare and the King James Bible, and explores the underlying reasons why the two books have been continually interconnected. Tickets: £12 (£10 Friends of Shakespeare’s Globe, Concessions, Students). Available through the box office: 020 7401 9919 or www.shakespearesglobe.com Graham Holderness’ playlet, Wholly Writ, will be performed during the evening by Globe actors: CAST Anne Shakespeare Ben Jonson William Shakespeare Judith Shakespeare St Peter Kiera/Katya
Frances Marshall Kevin Quarmby James Wallace Rachel Winters Kevin Quarmby Frances Marshall/ Rachel Winters
Notes to Editors Globe Education is the largest theatre education department in the UK. Each year, more than 100,000 people of all ages and nationalities participate in Globe Education's programme of public events, workshops and courses. Globe Education also runs an extensive programme in the Southwark community and creates national and international outreach projects for students and teachers. For more information, visit www.globe-education.org The Shakespeare Globe Trust is a registered charity No.266916. The Globe receives no public subsidy. Graham Holderness was born in Leeds and educated at state schools before attending Jesus College, Oxford. He has taught at the universities of Oxford, Swansea, Roehampton and Hertfordshire. He is qualified to higher doctoral level in English and Drama, to doctoral level in Literature and Theology, and has published extensively in early modern and modern literature, drama and theology. Most of his 35 published books focus on Shakespeare, with particular interests in Shakespeare’s history plays, Shakespeare and the media, Shakespeare editing, Shakespeare and contemporary culture and trans-national Shakespeare. His influential publications include: D.H. Lawrence: History, Ideology and Fiction (1982); Shakespeare’s History (1985); The Shakespeare Myth (1988); Shakespeare Out of Court: Dramatizations of Court Society (1990); Shakespeare: The Histories (2000); and the trilogy Cultural Shakespeare: Essays in the Shakespeare Myth (2001), Visual Shakespeare: Essays in Film and Television (2002), and Textual Shakespeare: Writing and the Word (2003). His novel The Prince of Denmark was published in 2002, and his poetry collection Craeft (2002) awarded a Poetry Book Society recommendation. He has also published research in literature and theology in journals such as Harvard Theological Review, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Literature and Theology, and Renaissance and Reformation. Recent
publications include Shakespeare in Venice (2009), and his forthcoming new biography Nine Lives of William Shakespeare (Continuum Press, 2011). He is General Editor of the peerreviewed journal Critical Survey. He is an elected Fellow of the English Association, the Royal Society of Arts, and the Royal Society of Medicine. Graham Holderness is Professor of English at the University of Hertfordshire, and Sub-deacon at the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels, Bedford Park. Married with four children, he lives in Chiswick.