Pilgrims, Puritans, and Shakespeare’s Wicked Stage

The Puritans’ and Pilgrims’ hatred of stage plays is a well known. There were, however, a number of direct connections between Shakespeare and the Plymouth colonists. One Mayflower passenger was part of the 1609 Bermuda shipwreck that inspired The Tempest. Another knew Sir Francis Walsingham and Lord Burleigh, two courtiers many consider models for Hamlet‘s Polonius.

Plimoth Plantation’s Richard Pickering discusses these connections and also explores the colonists’ impassioned feelings regarding London play-going by transforming himself into the adventurous Stephen Hopkins and the virtuous Elder William Brewster.

Richard Pickering is the Deputy Executive Director at Plimoth Plantation, the living museum of seventeenth-century Plymouth and the Wampanoag Homeland.

This lecture and performance will take place in the Abbey Room in the BPL’s Central Library in Copley Square.  Seating is available on a first-come first-serve basis on the night of the event; but for planning purposes, please reply for this free event at https://Cry.Eventbrite.com.

For more information about the Associates of the Boston Public Library, visit www.TheAssociates.org.