The Essay

Prominent people in a particular line of work read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and the human experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a soldier a critic or a journalist.Francis Gilbert was a secondary school teacher for a number of years and is now Lecturer in Education at the University of London. He reads Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile and reflects on whether this template for a perfect education has a place and an influence on today's curriculum. Rousseau was an 18th-century Swiss philosopher and Emile - which charted the imagined education of the books titular young man - can be through of as the educational textbook of the Romantic movement. Rousseau's ideas have influenced Steiner Schools and the Montessori movement but are they desirable (or even feasible) in the age of mass state education.Producer: James Cook.

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 LondonThe 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.

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.4.Preti Taneja: Freedom of Speech or "Nothing": King Lear and Contemporary IndiaPreti recently undertook a wide-reaching trip to India in order to research her own new novel based on King Lear. In this Essay, she considers Shakespeare's great tragedy as a lens through which to explore some of the contradictions of freedom of speech and censorship, development and corruption, activism and violence facing the world's youngest, fastest growing democracy today. Preti Taneja is a former Radio 3 New Generation Thinker and post-doctoral research fellow in Global Shakespeare at Queen Mary, University of London, and Warwick 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.

Joan explores the symbolism of food and eating in Shakespeare's plays

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.3.Joan Fitzpatrick with "Wolf All?- Shakespeare and Food in Renaissance England"Joan Fitzpatrick explains her new research on what people ate in Shakepeare's England, and what food and the consumption of food signifies in his plays. She starts with details of enormously popular Dietary books, such as William Bullein's Government of Health, (first printed in 1542) and goes on to explore why eating is about far more than nourishment, shedding important new light on the old, the young, the thin, the fat, women, foreigners, the poor and social elites in Shakespeare's plays. Joan Fitzpatrick is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Loughborough UniversityBBC 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.

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. 2.James Loxley on Undiscovered Countries: Shakespeare and the NationAt a time when relationships between the UK and the rest of Europe, and between the UK's own constituent nations, looks more unsettled than for many years, James Loxley explores what light Shakespeares plays might throw on tricky questions of national identity and the political debates that can grow up around them.James starts by considering Henry V, for which Shakespeare is often depicted as a celebrant of untroubled Englishness, giong on to explain that during Shakespeare's most creative period, the very name and nature of the country was in dispute, with the concept of "Great Britain" becoming a prospect for the first time.And he concludes by wondering how Shakespeare's plays can help us understand our own national questions today.James Loxley is Professor of Early Modern Literature in the University of EdinburghBBC 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.

James explores the light Shakespeare throws on national identity, then and now

Four centuries after the death of Shakespeare, five 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. 1.Sophie Duncan on Shakespeare and the SuffragettesSophie Duncan reveals how Shakespeare's heroines helped transform Victorian schoolgirls into Edwardian activists.The 19th century actress Ellen Terry told the suffragettes that they had more in common with Shakespeare's female characters than with the fragile, domestic ladies of Victorian novels. Sohie Duncan's new research starts with the unanticipated results of a competition run in The Girls' Own Paper in 1888 to find its readers' favourite Shakespearean heroine. It moves into more conventional scholarly territory with an analysis of a Suffragist-led production of The Winter's Tale in 1914, and its impact on English Suffragettes as a depiction of violence against women and the transformative power of female friendship.Sophie Duncan is Calleva Post-Doctoral Researcher at Magdalen College, OxfordBBC Radio 3 marks 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.

Playwright and academic Elizabeth Kuti explores Sean O'Casey's "The Silver Tassie"

Photographer John D McHugh explores one of the war photos taken by Fr Francis Browne