30-Second Shakespeare uses the unique approach of the bestselling 30-Second series to grapple with the work and influence of the world’s most famous playwright. This absorbing crash course takes the reader through what we know of his life, then turns to uncoding key concepts, themes and motifs in his plays and other works, and finishes with a succinct look at the Bard’s extraordinary literary and linguistic legacy.
Dr Rosalind Barber is a lecturer on the MA course in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, and Director of Research at the Shakespearean Authorship Trust. Her articles on Shakespeare and on Christopher Marlowe are widely published. She is author of The Marlowe Papers, published in 2012 and written entirely in Shakespearean blank verse. It was awarded the Desmond Elliott Prize, jointly awarded the Author's Club Best First Novel Award, and long-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction.
Mark Rylance is an actor who recently appeared as Thomas Cromwell in the BBC's Wolf Hall. He is also a trustee of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust and an Honorary Bencher of The Middle Temple Hall. He was the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for ten years and wrote the play 'I Am Shakespeare'.