Carol RutterLink opens in a new window, Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies, will deliver this year's Notre Dame London Shakespeare Lecture, 'Widening the Shakespeare Circle: the Playwright, the Diplomat and the Theatricality of Everyday Life' on Tuesday 22 March, 2022.

A foreign state sponsors a political assassination on English soil.

The attempt fails.

In its aftermath, Her Majesty's government asks her expert advisers:

What is the appropriate level of response?

What action can we take against murderous individuals --

and state sponsored terrorism?

Sound familiar?

But this case dates not from 2018 but 1584, when the Spanish Ambassador in London colluded in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. The Queen's Privy Council wanted to execute Mendoza. The jurist Alberico Gentili said they couldn't -- because even criminal ambassadors were protected by the right to diplomatic immunity. The following year Gentili published his comprehensive treatise on the role of the ambassador, a book Henry Wotton undoubtedly knew when he arrived in Venice in 1604, instructed by King James to restore diplomatic relations between London and the Republic.

'Hear the Ambassadors: The Performance of Diplomacy in the Age of Shakespeare' is an exhibition that draws together the strands of this history. It thinks about the theory of embassy. It looks at fictions of embassy on Shakespeare's stage. And it displays the practice of Wotton's Venetian embassy. It gathers a rich collection original documents, objects, and early printed books to illustrate the performance of diplomacy. Curated by Warwick's Professor Carol Chillington Rutter in collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the exhibition reminds us of the on-going work that ambassadors do to 'represent the person of the Prince' and to 'practice the healing art' of diplomacy.

The exhibition runs from until September 3 2018 in the Treasures Room of the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford upon Avon. It is funded by a grant from the Warwick Impact Fund.

A new film of Shakespeare's great speech opposing prejudice. Filmed in Leeds for BBAShakespeare and Prof Tony Howard.

Working with the director Peter Trifunovic, Professor Tony Howard (English Department/Warwick's Multicultural Shakespeare Project) has put together a short film which takes speeches believed to be by Shakespeare and transplants them to a pub in Leeds today. Across the centuries, it speaks powerfully about intolerance and the refugee crisis - during Refugee Week 2018.

World Refugee Day. The Strangers' Case www.youtube.com

Please watch and Spread The Words.

This new film based on a four hundred year old speech shows fear of immigration is nothing new.

In 1517 anti-immigrant riots broke out in London. Thomas More, then a deputy Sheriff of the city, intervened.

Decades later William Shakespeare wrote a speech for the play 'Sir Thomas More', in which More defended asylum seekers - 'the strangers'.

#RefugeeWeek2018 #WorldRefugeeDay

Against Prejudice: A celebration of Ira Aldridge

Thursday 19 September, 7 pm, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

Join us for a celebration of Ira Aldridge, with a staged reading and panel discussion of Against Prejudice: Ira Aldridge Theatre Manager- 1828 led by Tony Howard

More information and link to the ticket office - warwick.ac.uk/thisiscov

Dr David Taylor is curating 'Draw New Mischief’: 250 years of Shakespeare and Political Cartoons in a new exhibition hosted by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon running 25 February – 15 October 2017. For details of the press release see here. David writes,

"I'm thrilled to be working with the Royal Shakespeare Company on this exhibition. It's been an exciting journey bringing this collection of cartoons together and we're also commissioning new work for current cartoonists that will be added to the exhibition over the course of its run.

“My research into political cartoons is driven by two overarching insights; first, that political cartoons cry out for close literary analysis and, second, that texts by Shakespeare and others shape the way we understand contemporary politics in profound ways that we're often unaware of. When I embarked on this project a number of years ago I felt strongly that the questions it was raising could be effectively presented through an exhibition and the RSC have proved to be the perfect partners in making this happen."

David will be discussing the exhibition on BBC Radio's Free Thinking today!