It is easy to overlook the vital importance of the opening lines in a play. As well as establishing the tone, mood and setting for all that is to follow, in just a few words the playwright must grab the audience’s attention and excite curiosity about the characters, action and story to come.

T.S Eliot, believed that the first scene of Hamlet was ‘as well constructed as that of any play ever written’. He described the opening twenty-two lines as ‘built of the simplest words in the most homely idiom . . . No poet has begun to master dramatic verse until he can write lines which, like these in Hamlet, are transparent’.

In Hamlet, it is this transparency that allows a series of purposeful delays in exposition. Instead of setting out elements of the coming plot, the opening lines evoke a powerful mood of tension, anxiety and suspicion as one sentinel relieves another’s watch:

Bernardo. Who’s there?
Francisco. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
Bernardo. Long live the King!
Francisco. Bernardo?
Bernardo. He.
Francisco. You come most carefully upon your hour.
Bernardo. ‘Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
Francisco. For this relief much thanks. ‘Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.

Although these minor characters are of little significance to the plot, their brief dialogue sets the scene for the appearance of the silent ghost of Hamlet’s father, the late King of Denmark, which will set in motion all the tragic events that follow.

In this study we will read – on the page and aloud – a variety of opening scenes from Shakespeare plays to explore their working, their impact on the audience, and how this most celebrated English language playwright developed his craft into an art.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Jane Wymark
• Monday 11 May, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time)
• £35.00 for one two-hour meeting, to include notes and background resources.

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

Greek tragedy has a timeless quality. As Virginia Woolf writes in her essay On Not Knowing Greek, ‘the stable, the permanent, the original human being is to be found there. . . . In the Electra or the Antigone we are impressed . . . by heroism itself, by fidelity itself.’

Revenge, betrayal, lust, murder— but also courage, compassion, honour: Sophocles shows the heights and depths of human emotion. We are moved today by the tension between reason and emotion, fate and free will, law and individual conscience, just as people were in classical Athens.

This LitSalon study will go deep into the world of Sophocles as we read Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus.  And we will explore the philosophy of tragedy with Aristotle’s Poetics and A. C. Bradley’s essay Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Seven meeting live online study led by Sean Forester
• Sundays, 17 May – 28 June 2026, 4.00-6.00 pm (UK time)

  • 17  May –   Oedipus Rex
  • 24  May –   Oedipus, Aristotle’s Poetics
  • 31  May –   Antigone   
  • 7  June. –   Antigone, Hegel on Tragedy   
  • 14 June –   Philoctetes 
  • 21 June –   Oedipus at Colonus
  • 28 June –   Oedipus at Colonus, Tragic Painting and Sculpture

• £245 for seven meeting study on Zoom

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

In May 2026 The Arden Shakespeare, widely regarded as setting the ‘gold standard’ for scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, will publish the first volumes of its new Fourth Series. These new editions will offer fresh insights into Shakespeare’s extraordinary output to new generations of readers, students and performers, as well as to those who are already familiar with his works.

We are delighted that Dr José Perez Diez, Associate Professor of Early Modern Drama in the School of English at the University of Leeds, who is editing the new edition of King John, has accepted our invitation to deliver a lecture on the art and craft of editing Shakespeare’s works and how this can enhance our own appreciation and understanding of his words and ideas.

Following the lecture there will be a panel discussion, chaired by London Literary Salon facilitator Tim Swinglehurst, with colleagues Julie Sutherland and Jane Wymark, chaired by Tim Swinglehurst with opportunities for questions and comments from participants to gain greater insight into the process, challenges and rewards of attentive editing and reading.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER:

Dr José A. Pérez Díez is Associate Professor of Early Modern Drama in the School of English at the University of Leeds. He currently serves as the Joint Chair of the British Shakespeare Association, and is a General Editor of The Revels Plays and the Associate Editor of the Oxford Complete Works of John Marston. He is editing the King John volume for the new Arden Shakespeare series.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Wednesday 17 June 2026, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time), live on Zoom
• Lecture by Dr José Pérez Díez lasting approximately 55 minutes, followed by panel discussion chaired by Tim Swinglehurst, with Jane Wymark and Dr Julie Sutherland and questions and comments from participants.
• £25.00 for two-hour live online event

Please note that although this study is fully booked, we are currently keeping a waiting list and may be able to offer a second study if there is sufficient demand. Please email us if you would like to be included on the waiting list.

Join Julie Sutherland to explore the moral complexity, political intrigue and dark humour of William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in this eight-week full-text study. Often called a ‘problem play’, it resists easy categorisation: not a traditional comedy or tragedy, it confronts audiences with the messy realities of justice, sexual morality, corruption and the abuse of power.

In Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio temporarily relinquishes power to the strict and seemingly righteous Angelo, who enforces Vienna’s laws with alarming severity. As the city grapples with corruption and sexual coercion, the characters—most notably the virtuous Isabella—navigate dilemmas of conscience, mercy and authority. Shakespeare exposes the tension between law and morality, highlighting the dangers of judging others when those in power are themselves deeply flawed.

Throughout the play, Shakespeare blends moments of comedy with unsettling moral questions, creating a world that is both vividly real and painfully ironic. Biblical themes of judgment and mercy echo throughout, challenging audiences to consider the balance between justice and forgiveness, while the looming, imperfect marriages at the play’s conclusion underscore the uncertainty of human happiness.

Over the course of eight meetings, we will read the entire play aloud, examining its rich language and provocative themes to gain a deep understanding of Shakespeare’s artistry. At the same time we will revel in the ways Measure for Measure reflects both the Elizabethan world and issues that remain startlingly modern.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight-meeting study live on Zoom led by Julie Sutherland
• Wednesdays, 5.00-7.00 pm BST, 15 July – 2 September 2026
• Recommended edition: Measure for Measure, The New Oxford Shakespeare, ISBN 13: 978-0192865861
• £280 for eight two-hour meetings

“Tamburlaine the Great.

Who, from a Scythian Shepherd

by his rare and wonderful Conquests

became a most puissant and mightye Monarque,

And (for his tyranny, and terrour in Warre) was termed

The Scourge of God.”

So reads the 1590 title page of the printed version of recent smash hits on the Elizabethan stage, the two parts of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. Nothing was to be the same again. As Professor Stephen Greenblatt has written in his recent monograph on Marlowe (Dark Renaissance, 2025), “Virtually everything in the Elizabethan theatre is pre- and post-Tamburlaine. Most literary innovation is incremental; it is rare for a work of art to change everything so quickly and decisively. But Tamburlaine is one of those rare instances.”

The plays plot the career of Tamburlaine, who from his origins as a humble shepherd conquers the mighty empires of Persia and Turkey and makes inroads into Europe, a trajectory encompassing the most horrific acts of cruelty and barbarity, yet all done to the accompaniment of the most extraordinary language.

Tamburlaine established unrhymed iambic pentameter (what we now call blank verse) as the dominant form for English drama, a form adopted and developed by Marlowe’s contemporary Shakespeare. Here was a fresh verbal music to ravish the ears of Elizabethan audiences, with its “high astounding terms” and pyrotechnical rhetorical flourishes, but also a form capable of expressing tender intimacy and labyrinthine inward reflection. The language of Tamburlaine is exotic and intoxicating, incorporating spellbinding repetitions of words and names – Zenocrate, Usumcasane, Persepolis – it is a thrill to read aloud, and there will be plenty of opportunities to do this during the study.

Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is a character who provokes varied reactions and questions. Is he a conquering hero or a bloodthirsty tyrant? Are we meant to respond to him with horrified revulsion or vicarious pleasure, ravished by his language and superhuman energy and daring? Here is a man of unlimited aspiration, unconstrained power and an inhuman consistency of purpose, a progenitor of Shakespeare’s Richard III, Milton’s Satan and Melville’s Ahab, an analogue for many real-life political leaders, even in our own times.

In this study we will read through Part 1 of Tamburlaine. If there is interest, we will follow with the sequel, in which “Tamburlaine the scourge of God must die”.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Tim Swinglehurst
• Wednesdays, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time), 16, 23, 30 September & 7, 14 October 2026
• Recommended edition: Tamburlaine, Parts One and Two by Christopher Marlowe, edited by Anthony B. Dawson, Methuen Drama (UK), 2003. ISBN: 978-0-7136-6814-8.
• £175.00 for five meetings, including background notes and resources.

REDUCED COSTS:  We are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We can’t promise to help but please email us if you would like to be considered for a reduced-fee place (your details will be treated as confidential).