By Mike Collett-White
LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) – Anyone wondering whether
Shakespeare’s plays are relevant today could do worse than
visiting a new exhibition at London’s British Museum dedicated
to the “Bard”, and, more importantly, the world in which he
lived.
Parallels between the works of Britain’s greatest cultural
export, his own tumultuous times and the contemporary world run
throughout “Shakespeare: staging the world”, which opens on
Thursday in the vaulted, circular Reading Room.
Using some 200 objects, many dating from the late 16th and
early 17th century, the exhibition seeks to conjure up London as
it was when Shakespeare was a dramatist at the Globe theatre at
a time when professional playwrights were a new phenomenon.
It is part of the London 2012 Festival, a celebration of
British culture designed to coincide with the Olympic Games
opening in the city next week, and of the World Shakespeare
Festival celebrating the playwright through to November.
Among the prize exhibits is the so-called “Robben Island
Bible”, a cheap edition of the complete works of Shakespeare
kept secretly at the South African jail by political prisoner
Sonny Venkatrathnam in the 1970s.
Disguised as a Hindu religious book, Venkatrathnam handed
the volume to other prisoners on Robben Island, including Nelson
Mandela, one of dozens who signed their name next to passages
that resonated with them personally.
The “bible” is opened at “Julius Caesar”, where in 1977
Mandela left his name beside a passage that begins:
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
Continued…
