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In Search of Shakespeare

S1 E1- A Time of Revolution

7.8

2003

1 Seasons

In Episode One, we are introduced to the dark side of Queen Elizabeth's police state; a time of surveillance, militarism and foreign wars. Shakespeare lived through the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, the colonization of the New World and the beginnings of British power in America. But most important, he also saw at first hand England's Cultural Revolution; an enforced split with the old medieval English spirit world which was to lead the English people into a brave new Protestant future. A split that Michael Wood argues defined Shakespeare's life.

Seasons

Season 14

Episodes

1. A Time of Revolution

60m

2. The Lost Years

60m

Michael Wood explains how the 29-year-old William Shakespeare became a star of the London stage-a shady story involving a murder-and uncovers a tale of religious conflict behind the Bard's "lost years." He travels with the Royal Shakespeare Company; uses Tudor maps and remarkable Victorian photos to bring Shakespeare's first London home back to life; and retraces the fateful journey of Shakespeare's great rival, Christopher Marlowe, down the river to Deptford.

In Search of Shakespeare

Seasons

Episodes

1. A Time of Revolution

2. The Lost Years

3. The Duty of Poets

4. For All Time