‘The passing of Her Majesty the Queen is not only an extraordinary moment in our time, it is an extraordinary moment in all time. Shakespeare, like so many of us, had only ever known female rule, and 400-years later, as the second Elizabethan Age comes to an end, we find ourselves seeing the history books being written and re-written once again.

Shakespeare tried to make sense of the ever-changing world in front of him by looking at worlds which had been before. He found inexhaustible material in the connection between the past and present, and at the heart of those connections was an endless curiosity in the British Monarchy.

Through poetry and play, Shakespeare examined the power of this ‘figure of God’s majesty’, explored the potency of the ‘royal throne of Kings’, embraced the theatricality of ‘the tide of pomp, that beats upon the high shore of this world’, and asked endless questions of the ‘head that wears the crown’.

If we turn to Shakespeare, we’ll find he too felt the magnitude of historic change. He considered all points of view, and in his work, we may find some perspective in his poetry, some comfort in his curiosity, and some meaning in his unanswered questions as he tries to make connections between the past, the present and the people who define them. Somewhere in that connection is also the hope as we look to the future, whose story is now waiting to be told.’

— Michelle Terry, Artistic Director