As part of our online reading of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, the New Swan Shakespeare Center is thrilled to welcome Shakespeare scholar Katie O'Hare, who will present the play as part of the design of Shakespeare's Henriad. Falstaff is banished from the genre of the history play at the end of Henry IV Part 2 and propelled into the comic Elizabethan world of Windsor in Merry Wives. Meet Mistress Quickly and learn about the in's and out's of Falstaff's ritual mocking at the end of the play.
Katie O’Hare is a PhD Candidate in Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with an MA in Shakespeare Studies from King’s College, London. Her research and teaching interests include early modern book history, Shakespeare’s plays in performance, and Shakespeare and Social Justice in Higher Education. Katie is currently working on a project that focuses on the Henriad and The Merry Wives of Windsor, considering the impact these plays have on audiences, and the communal effect they create. Katie has also worked closely with the professional theater company, Santa Cruz Shakespeare in her role as a Public Fellow and Dramaturg.
This is a collaboration between the New Swan Shakespeare Center and the Shakespeare Workshop at UC Santa Cruz.