Shakespeare Alive!: America's Foremost Theater Producer Brings Shakespeare's England to Life

From Joseph Papp, American’s foremost theater producer, and writer Elizabeth Kirkland: a captivating tour through the world of William Shakespeare.  

Discover the London of Shakespeare's time, a fascinating place to be—full of mayhem and magic, exploration and exploitation, courtiers and foreigners. Stroll through narrow, winding streets crowded with merchants and minstrels, hoist a pint in a rowdy alehouse, and hurry across the river to the open-air Globe Theater to see that latest play written by a young man named Will Shakespeare.  

Shakespeare Alive! spirits you back  to the very years of that London—as everyday people might have experienced it. Find out how young people fell in love, how workers and artists made ends meet, what people found funny and what they feared most. Go on location with an Elizabethan theater company to learn how plays were produced, where Shakespeare’s plots came from and how he transformed them. Hear the music of Shakespeare’s language and words we still use today that were first  spoken in his time. Open the book and elbow your way into the Globe with the groundlings. You’ll be joining one of the most democratic audiences the theater has ever known—alewives, apprentices,  shoemakers and nobles—in applauding the dazzling wordplay and swordplay brought to you by William Shakespeare.

Joseph Papp (1921–1991) was an American theatrical producer and director. Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954 with the aim of making Shakespeare's works accessible to the public. He established the Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in downtown New York. Upon Papp's death, the Public Theater was renamed the Joseph Papp Public Theater.

Elizabeth Kirkland is an author, lecturer, and Biblical scholar. She holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale Divinity School. She is the co-author, with Joseph Papp, of Shakespeare Alive!: America's Foremost Theater Producer Brings Shakespeare's England to Life.