COURSE: Fooling Shakespeare

23rd May - 25th May 2025



COURSE: Fooling Shakespeare 
Friday 23rd 
 - Sunday 25th May 2025
Book through Reception on 01244 532 350 or email [email protected]

‘Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun. It shines everywhere’.

These words, spoken by Feste, the fool at the heart of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, capture something of the wild cut and thrust energy of this extraordinary play. In the glittering world of Illyria, foolishness is wisdom; subversion is overt; and excess is, well, just too much. Whether you already love Shakespeare’s works, or whether they’re a source of frustration to you, this will be a weekend of Shakespeare without fear, with just one play – Twelfth Night (c. 1601) – to read or watch in advance, and with all other materials provided for you. 

In 2016 Professor Emma Rees was Gladstone’s Library’s first Political Writer in Residence. She is professor of literature and gender studies at the University of Chester where she has taught Shakespeare’s works for a quarter of a century. In 2017 she finally achieved her goal of seeing every one of Shakespeare’s plays live on stage at least once, and she ran her first residential Gladstone’s Library Shakespeare course in 2018, on The Taming of the Shrew. She returned in 2019 with The Merchant of Venice; led a weekend course on Macbeth in 2023; and on The Tempest in 2024. She’s delighted to be returning in 2025 with Twelfth Night.

Schedule: 

Day 1 

5pm Welcome and introductions 

6pm Dinner 

7.30pm Session 1: Twelfth Night: a play of an age? Or for all time? 

Day 2 

9.45am? Session 2: Doubling up in Illyria 

11am Coffee break 

11.30am Session 3: Fooling around on Shakespeare’s stage 

1pm Lunch 

2.30pm-3.30pm Session 4: What You Will (or won’t) 

5pm Public Lecture: ‘More matter for a May morning’: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the thresholds of foolery 

6pm Drinks in the Gladstone Room 

6.45pm  Dinner 

Day 3 

9.45am Session 5: Journeys end in lovers meeting 

11 Coffee break 

11.30am Session 6: Twelfth Night in the 21st century 

1pm Lunch and departure 

Residential rates (includes breakfast, two course lunch with tea or filter coffee on Saturday and Sunday and a two course dinner with tea or filter coffee on Friday and Saturday)

One delegate in a single ensuite: £407 (or £359 with a student, clergy or Society of Authors discount)

Two delegates in a twin or double: £627 (or £565 with discounts)

One delegate in a double or twin occupancy: £477 (or £415 with discount)
One delegate and one non-delegate guest in a twin or double: £577 (or £515 with discount)
Non-residential rate: £220 (including breaks, lunches and dinners)