What Shakespeare experts are saying…
Professor Stanley Wells
“Shakespeare Week will offer a gateway through which young people can sample the
lifelong stimulus that Shakespeare can provide for the human imagination.”
Professor Stanley Wells CBE, BA, PhD, Hon DLitt, Hon DPhil, Honorary President of
the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the
University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre, of which he was for many years Vice-Chairman. He holds a
Ph.D. of the University of Birmingham and honorary doctorates from Furman
University, South Carolina, and from the Universities of Munich, Hull, Durham and
Warwick.
Stanley.wells@shakespeare.org.uk
01789 207134
Professor Carol Rutter
“An introduction to William Shakespeare is one of the most important things we can
give our children. He's someone they can know for the rest of their lives. He'll tell
them some of the most electrifying stories they'll ever hear. He'll talk to them about
some of the biggest ideas they'll ever have to think about and deal with. He'll give
them access to some of the most fascinating, terrifying, troubled, funny, endearing
people they'll ever encounter. He'll give them language that will continuously stretch
their intellectual and emotional capacities, language tried out and tested in
Shakespeare's fictive world that will equip them to imagine and be themselves in
their real worlds. He's a scientist who puts humanity under the microscope. A
composer whose poetry puts music in our bodies and teaches us to sing; a painter,
who puts together astonishing spectacles. In every area of human activity, from
mathematics to gardening to astronomy to military discipline - he's there, prompting
us to think and feel. In a very real sense, Shakespeare isn't on the syllabus.
Shakespeare is the syllabus.”
Carol Chillington Rutter is Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies at the
University of Warwick where she has directed the CAPITAL Centre since 2007. The
innovative work she has done at the centre has included a project to re-imagine
Shakespeare teaching for the 21st century. This project, ‘Shakespeare Without
Chairs’ is now not only embedded in the curriculum but serves as a model for open
space teaching across the University. She was elected National Teaching Fellow in
2010.
C.Rutter@warwick.ac.uk
01789 450 795
Professor Philip Davis
"Unleashing the power of Shakespeare in young minds is exactly what education
should be doing in order to create mobile and lively minds in our young people. I am
a big supporter of the idea behind Shakespeare Week, which is to give primary
school children exposure to the language of Shakespeare to help to develop creative
minds, independent thought before it's too late and mental pathways become rigid."
Professor Philip Davis is the Director of Centre for Research into Reading,
Information and Linguistic Systems at the University of Liverpool. His most
recent publications include The Victorians 1830-1880, vol 8 in Oxford English Literary
History series, Oxford: OUP 2002; Why Victorian Literature Still Matters, Oxford;
Wiley Blackwell 2008; Bernard Malamud; A Writer's Life, Oxford; OUP 2007;
Shakespeare Thinking, London: Continuum, 2006. He has also published on The
Shakespeared Brain – Shakespeare and Neuroscience - in NeuroImage and Cortex
(forthcoming).
p.m.davis@liverpool.ac.uk
0151 794 271
For more information, please contact: Laura Sullivan / Nancy Collantine at Fido
PR:
e. nancy.collantine@fidopr.co.uk or laura.sullivan@fidopr.co.uk | t. 0161
2743311