麻豆约拍

A tabloid history of Shakespeare's England, told through a collection of contemporary accounts of plots to murder Elizabeth I and James I.

Object-based history series presented by Neil MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum.

Taking artefacts from William Shakespeare's time, he explores how Elizabethan and Jacobean playgoers made sense of the unstable and rapidly changing world in which they lived.

With old certainties shifting around them, in a time of political and religious unrest and economic expansion, Neil asks what the plays would have meant to the public when they were first performed.

He uses carefully selected objects to explore the great issues of the day that preoccupied the public and helped shape the works, and he considers what they can reveal about the concerns and beliefs of Shakespearean England.

Omnibus of eps 11-15 of 20 episodes.

Neil MacGregor shows what a delicate glass goblet reveals about the twin seductions of Venice: its sought after luxuries and its equally sought after women and the problems in uniting Scotland and England, creating a Great Britain and a set of designs for a common flag.

Producer: Paul Kobrak

First broadcast on 麻豆约拍 Radio 4 in May 2012.