19 March 2026
7:00pm - 8:30pm
Friends’ Meeting House
Mount Street, Manchester M2 5NS
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£15.00 General Admission / £6.00 Students / Members book for FREE
Wheelchair accessible
Overview
How do we know Shakespeare was Shakespeare? Could a glover’s son who left school at fifteen really be the author behind such masterpieces as Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest?
Yes! says historian Susan Amussen. She transports readers back to early modern England, to travel the path that carried William Shakespeare from humble origins in Stratford to literary greatness on the London stage. This was a society undergoing rapid change. Grammar schools made education in Latin and Greek available to commoners, while touring players brought the latest dramatic productions to the masses. And in London, a metropolis filled with European visitors, ordinary people had the opportunity to see courtly life up close.
No serious historian doubts that Shakespeare was the author of the plays that bear his name. Susan Amussen shares what they know: that Shakespeare’s England was a complex and cosmopolitan place, with everything a talented young playwright needed to develop his craft and furnish his imagination.
Practical Information
Booking is essential. Lit&Phil members: we recommend logging into the website to make booking your free member ticket quicker and easier.
Accessibility Information
The venue is wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Please contact us regarding any specific accessibility requirements you may have by emailing events@manlitphil.ac.uk
Professor Susan D. Amussen
Susan D. Amussen is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Merced. She is the author of several books, most recently Gender, Culture and Politics in England, 1560-1603: Turning the World Upside Down, co-written with David Underdown (2017). She serves as co-editor of volume III of The New Cambridge History of Britain (2025). While her primary work has been as a social historian focused on gender, race and class, her research has been used extensively by literary scholars, with whom she has been in conversation for over thirty years.
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Catherine Fletcher [interviewer] is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her book, The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in 2026. Catherine has published widely on early modern Italy and Europe, with previous books including The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance and The Black Prince of Florence: The Life of Alessandro de’ Medici. She is a regular broadcaster and podcaster including for the BBC and is committed to bringing her research to wider publics.