Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Hall

Peter Hall is one of the most significant and influential directors of Shakespeare’s work of modern times. Through both his own work and the management of two national theatre companies, the National Theatre and the RSC, Hall has promoted Shakespeare as a writer who can comment incisively on the modern world. His best productions exemplified this approach: Coriolanus (1959), The Wars of the Roses (1963) and Hamlet (1965) established his reputation as a director able to bring Shakespeare to the heart of contemporary politics. However, Hall’s career has been very varied, and sometimes his critical failures are as interesting as his successes. The book explores Hall’s work as a deliberate articulation of Shakespeare and national culture in the post-war years. The main focus is on his Shakespeare work, but critical attention is also given to non-Shakespearean productions, notably his 1955 Waiting for Godot (and his relationship with Samuel Beckett in general) and his 2000 Tantalus (and his work with John Barton), placing Hall’s work in its cultural and creative context. Setting Hall's work against the post-war development of national culture, the book explores how his work with other writers and artists (including Beckett, Pinter and Barton) informed his approach to directing as well as his rehearsal methods and his approach to Shakespeare’s text.

Peter Holland holds the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre and is Associate Dean for the Arts at the University of Notre Dame. He was formerly Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and is editor of Shakespeare Survey and co-general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare Topics series.

Peter Holland is McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

Peter Holland is the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies and the Associate Dean for the Arts at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

Stephen Purcell is Assistant Professor in English at the University of Warwick, UK.

Miranda Fay Thomas is Assistant Professor in Theatre and Performance at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. They are the author of Shakespeare's Body Language: Shaming Gestures and Gender Politics on the Renaissance Stage (the Arden Shakespeare, 2019) and editor of The Tempest (Arden Performance Editions, 2021).

Vanessa I. Corredera is Professor of English at Baylor University, USA. Her publications include Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America (2022), articles in Literature Compass, The Journal of American Studies, Borrowers and Lenders, and Shakespeare Quarterly, and essays in several edited collections. She is also co-editor, alongside L. Monique Pittman and Geoffrey Way, of Shakespeare and Cultural Appropriation (2023), as well as a General Editor of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation.