Starlings in Shakespeare’s England

Starlings in Shakespeare’s England

In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Hotspur delivers a chilling threat against King Richard:  “I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak  Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him  To keep his anger still in motion.”  It’s a line rooted...
The Real Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstierne

The Real Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstierne

with Paul Lockhart When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he gave the melancholy Dane two university friends with peculiarly Danish names—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. For many centuries, audiences assumed these were simply fictional creations. Yet history reveals that...