The Latest Breaking News from Hamnet

New analysis of a letter fragment mentioning Shakespeare and his wife suggests the couple lived together in London in the early 17th century.

The Hamnet author talks about bringing her bestselling Shakespeare novel to the screen, working with Paul Mescal, and how her speech disorder inspired her latest children’s book

Start the year off right with some 21st century classics

Initially slow, the show about Shakespeare and his family weaves a beguiling narrative web around the creation of life and art

The actor on playing William Shakespeare’s wife, and making her West End debut opposite Jennifer Saunders

Shakespeare wrote his famous narrative poem Venus and Adonis in a lockdown era when, in 1593, the bubonic plague closed the theatres in London for 18 months.

With cheap tickets on offer these are our recommendations of shows to check out

The Nomadland director is adapting award-winning novel Hamnet

The RSC has reopened its refurbished Swan Theatre with an eagerly anticipated adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel Hamnet, said Sam Marlowe in The Stage. As “snug and supple” a fit for the Stratford stage as one of the bespoke gloves made by William Shakespeare’s bullying father, it imagines the…

Shakespeare’s wife moves centre stage in Lolita Chakrabarti’s pivotal adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, while urgent productions from two small London theatres tackle recent history head on

A collection of cultural highlights for the coming weekend