
The English language is spoken by 450 million people around the globe, with a further one billion using it as a second language. It is arguably Britain’s most famous export. The man often given credit for the global triumph of English, and the invention of many of our modern words, is William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays first hit the stage four centuries ago, as the explorers of Elizabethan England were laying the foundations for the British empire. It was this empire that would carry English around the world. Language historian and BBC New Generation Thinker Dr John Gallagher asks whether the real story of how English became a global linguistic superpower is more complex.
Interviewed Guest
Interviewed Guest
Interviewed Guest
Interviewed Guest
Presenter

Scuffles, Swagger and Shakespeare: The Hidden Story of English
The English language is spoken by 450 million people around the globe, with a further one billion using it as a second language. It is arguably Britain’s most famous export. The man often given credit for the global triumph of English, and the invention of many of our modern words, is William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays first hit the stage four centuries ago, as the explorers of Elizabethan England were laying the foundations for the British empire. It was this empire that would carry English around the world. Language historian and BBC New Generation Thinker Dr John Gallagher asks whether the real story of how English became a global linguistic superpower is more complex.
2019-11-12
0
Shakespeare is often credited with revolutionising English, but is the real story more complex?
0.0A radical cinematic investigation into the myth of Hamlet, the avenging prince of Denmark, William Shakespeare's creature; his origins and his unending influence on many diverse cultures.
0.0Documentary examination of the role of Hamlet, in which ten prominent actors who have played the part discuss Hamlet's personality, Shakespeare's play, and the enduring popular fascination it has inspired. The actors interviewed are Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Richard Burton, Nicol Williamson, Ben Kingsley, Jean Louis Barrault, Vittorio Gassman, Maximilian Schell, Innocenti Smoktunovsky, and Mandy Patinkin. Includes excerpts from various film and television versions of Hamlet, featuring these actors and others.
0.0One of the greatest Hamlets of the 20th century Sir John Gielgud reflects on the play and its title character with which he used to be intimately associated for ever since 1929.
5.0The making of the next Aaron Aaron Byrne Movie takes a turn for the worst.
0.0Mel Gibson teaches Hamlet to a group of high school drama students.
7.0Journey into "Hamlet"-the play and the man-through the experiences of some of the major actors and directors who have brought Shakespeare's great tragedy to life. Christopher Plummer, David Tennant, John Nettles, John Simm, Sir Trevor Nunn, Franco Zeffirelli, Philip Saville, and others explore the enduring appeal of the Prince of Denmark more than 400 years after his stage debut.
0.0The story behind the translation and performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in Klingon.
0.0A tour of Stratford-upon-Avon's houses and hamlets, stomping ground of a young William Shakespeare.
0.0"Shakespeare Country" will take you on a journey, not only through the life of the great Bard of Avon but also across the beautiful Warwickshire countryside that he knew, loved and never forgot his whole life long.
6.3Four young people escape Athens to a forest where the king and queen of the fairies are quarreling, while meanwhile, a troupe of amateur actors rehearses a play. When the fairy Puck uses a magic flower to make people fall in love, the whole thing becomes a little bit confused...
8.3At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
6.2If you had a love-potion, who would you make fall madly in love with you? Timothy, prone to escaping his dismal high school reality through dazzling musical daydreams, gets to answer that question in a very real way. After his eccentric teacher casts him as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he stumbles upon a recipe hidden within the script to create the play's magical, purple love-pansy.
7.1Scotland, 11th century. Driven by the twisted prophecy of three witches and the ruthless ambition of his wife, warlord Macbeth, bold and brave, but also weak and hesitant, betrays his good king and his brothers in arms and sinks into the bloody mud of a path with no return, sown with crime and suspicion.
0.0MacHomer is a one-person play by Rick Miller which blends William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth with the animated television series The Simpsons.
8.0Blood will have blood. Unbridled ambition, supernatural forces, and murderous desires reign supreme in Shakespeare’s most poetic examination of evil. When three witches tell Macbeth that he will become King of Scotland, he plots with his wife to attain the title through an assassination; a bloody act that gives him his crown and sends him careening down the path of his own undoing.
0.0An irascible Shakespeare scholar with early onset dementia communicates with her caretaker daughter using the only language available to her, the text of King Lear, as the two struggle with aging, love, and their own balance of power.
3.0Lucentio loves Bianca but cannot court her until her shrewish older sister Katherina marries. The eccentric Petruccio marries the reluctant Katherina and uses a number of tactics to render her an obedient wife.
5.3An adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. Prospera (a female version of Shakespeare's Prospero) is the usurped ruler of Milan who has been banished to a mysterious island with her daughter. Using her magical powers, she draws her enemies to the island to exact her revenge.
6.9Shakespeare's comedy of gender confusion, in which a girl disguises herself as a man to be near the count she adores, only to be pursued by the woman he loves.