In Search of Shakespeare
This is not your father's Shakespeare - that boring bloke who's suffered the slings and arrows of outraged school kids for generations. Michael Wood's Shakespeare is funny, poignant, profound and sexy, a writer who's been wowing audiences for more than 400 years. Wood, a historian, writer and documentary filmmaker (Conquistadors; In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great) hosts this 4-part series that explores the life of the world's greatest writer. As fashioned by Wood, it is a historical "whodunit," mixing travel, adventure, interviews and specially filmed sequences with the Royal Shakespeare Company on the road. The programs set the life of the "Great Briton" in the turbulent times in which he lived, a world far from the one suggested by the prim portrait of the balding bard with a ruff and a quill pen.
In Search of Shakespeare Previous Broadcasts
For All Time (Episode #104)
KQED Plus: Tue, May 4, 2010 -- 11:00 PM
In the final episode, Michael Wood examines Shakespeare's life in the era of King James I. He unearths Shakespeare's neighborhood in London and visits the current queen's robe-makers for evidence of Shakespeare's role in the royal coronation. Shakespeare's world is transformed in 1605 by the Gunpowder Plot, a Jacobean September 11. The entertainment industry responded, and Shakespeare contributed Macbeth, a daring play about the murder of a king. Finally, Wood follows Shakespeare back to Warwickshire and looks at the riddle of Shakespeare's will and its strange bequest to his wife, Anne.
Repeat Broadcasts:
- KQED Plus: Wed, May 5, 2010 -- 5:00 AM









