What could the world’s greatest writer possibly have to teach us about modern business?
Perhaps because he was a ‘hired hand’ himself, no one understood the dilemmas of working life better than William Shakespeare. Politics and power; double-speak and double dealing; ambition and avarice; succession and depression… the stuff of modern business life; and also, 400-year-old themes from Shakespeare’s plays.
In ‘The Bard & Co’, 28 leading writers for business were assigned a Shakespeare play and asked to demonstrate how it might reflect and illuminate the inner-workings of contemporary business. The result is an imaginative and thought-provoking collection of essays, fiction and personal observation, offering fresh insights into the way that management, workers and corporations behave.
It opens up different ways of thinking about your career, your business and your everyday life. It uses Shakespeare as your inspiration and your guide. And it releases worlds of creative potential by revealing the enduring possibilities of the Bard’s endlessly fascinating language.
‘The Bard & Co’ comes with a preface by the Globe’s artistic director Dominic Dromgoole. 26 would like to thank the Globe for all their help and support with the project, and for hosting our launch event. To find out more about their good work visit www.shakespeares-globe.org.
To listen to extracts from ‘The Bard & Co’ just click on the titles below. Many thanks to Fraser Southey and voiceover agency Evans O’Brien for organising these wonderful readings. Also to actors Jim McManus, Nicolette Mackenzie, Lin Sagovsky, Celyn Jones and Matt Duqenoy, and engineer Mark Smith of Mark Smith Sound.
‘The Bard & Co’ was edited by Jim Davies, John Simmons and Rob Williams, and published by Cyan Books. It is available on Amazon.
- Introduction/The Sonnets
- Antony And Cleopatra
- The Taming Of The Shrew
- Othello
- Twelfth Night
- Henry IV
- Macbeth
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Julius Caesar
- A Winters’ Tale
- As You Like It
- Richard III
- The Merchant of Venice
- Titus Andronicus
- Timon Of Athens
- Coriolanus
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Love’s Labour’s Lost
- Hamlet
- Measure For Measure
- King Lear
- Henry V
- Troilus and Cressida
- The Comedy Of Errors
- The Tempest
- Romeo And Juilet
- Richard II
- The Players’ Finale
- Credits