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Shakespeare: Portraiture, Biography and the Material World

This academic interdisciplinary conference will accompany the exhibition Searching for Shakespeare opening at the National Portrait Gallery in March 2006. The exhibition brings together a body of material from Shakespeare’s lifetime. It includes documents relating directly to the playwright’s biography such as his last will and testament, manuscripts relating to performance and stagecraft, together with portraits of patrons and players, books of plays printed in Shakespeare’s lifetime and costume of the period.

The conference aims to contextualise events and relationships from Shakespeare’s life including his marriage, property purchases, and ownership and knowledge of material goods. It will also explore Shakespeare’s knowledge of the visual arts, issues concerning lifetime portraiture and his posthumous representations.

For further information visit www.npg.org.uk/conferences