Members of the BSA can now access a members' area which includes an archive of all emails and files sent by the BSA to members and profiles of members who have chosen to share their skills and expertise.

You can also use this site to update your membership details.

To register for the members' area, go to http://groupspaces.com/britishshakespeare/join/ and fill out the form. You must be a member of the BSA to do this and you must use the email address you registered when you joined the BSA (unless you have since updated your email address with us).

To enter the members' area, go to http://groupspaces.com/britishshakespeare/login/

To update your membership details, go to http://groupspaces.com/britishshakespeare/updateprofile

 

Shakespeare the Collaborator: Paul Edmondson in conversation with John Jowett, Paul Edmondson, Eric Rasmussen and Peter Kirwan

7.30pm, 25th November 2011, The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Join the British Shakespeare Association and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for a lively discussion of Shakespeare’s collaborations with John Jowett, Paul Edmondson, Eric Rasmussen and Peter Kirwan. 

The event will start at 7.30pm, after the BSA’s AGM, and will be held in the Shakespeare Centre, next to the Birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon, on the 25th November 2011.

Tickets are £5 or £4 for members of the BSA and Friends of the SBT. Tickets will be available on the door.

Shakespeare did not always write alone. We know that he collaborated with John Fletcher, George Wilkins and Thomas Middleton, and it is possible that other authors contributed lines and scenes to many more plays. Scholars continue to debate Shakespeare’s relationship with other writers, and recently the Oxford edition of The Complete Works of Thomas Middleton included Measure for Measure and Macbeth as plays ‘adapted by Thomas Middleton’. How does an appreciation of the range of Shakespeare’s collaborations change and deepen our reception of the plays? What did collaboration mean for Shakespeare and his contemporaries?

The 5th Biennial British Shakespeare Association Conference is being held in Lancaster from February 24th-26th in 2012. The call for papers is now closed and the conference committee will be in touch soon with members who have proposed panels and sessions. The conference already looks set to be a classic BSA event with papers for academics, teachers and theatre practitioners. There are going to be special workshops for local schools, and there will be a special performance of Much Ado About Nothing exclusively for conference delegates in Lancaster's historic castle. The acclaimed company Northern Broadsides will be bringing Love's Labour's Lost to Lancaster that week, and its artistic director, Barrie Rutter, will be speaking at the conference about his work. The conference also marks the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the BSA and we will be celebrating the occassion in style with a special reception. We hope you will be able to join us. 

In an article in The Daily Telegraph, Professor Stanley Wells (an Honorary Associate of the British Shakespeare Associate) puts a forceful case against the claims made in the new film Anonymous that Shakespeare was not the author of his plays. One of his concerns, which many of us in the BSA share, is the extent to which theories which were once the preserve of eccentric amateurs is now seeping into schools and universities. If you have students who are curious about the authorship issue, Professor Wells' article is an excellent place to start: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/entertainment/anonymous-movie/8793970/No-Shakespeare-was-not-a-fraud.html