Shakespeare 400: Shakespeare Beyond London

Four centuries after Shakespeare's death, young scholars share new evaluations of his work - in a series of essays recorded in front of an audience in Shakespeare's old classroom at the Guildhall in Stratford-upon-Avon.

5.Siobhan Keenan on Shakespeare Beyond London

The Globe Theatre on the South Bank gives us such a clear image of productions of Shakespeare's plays in his own day, that it's easy to forget they were also performed far beyond London. Siobhan sets out to explain how Shakespeare and his fellow actors regularly toured the country, performing in spaces ranging from town halls and churches to large country houses.

Siobhan sheds light on why most of Shakespeare's plays were designed so that they could be performed anywhere - with call for few props and little scenery - in order to reveal the importance of touring to his career, and the emergence of Shakespeare as a cultural icon in Elizabethan and Jacobean England - and beyond.

Siobhan Keenan is Reader in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at De Montfort University.

BBC Radio 3 is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.

Producer: Beaty Rubens.