Read them? I haven’t even taught them.

Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept— As ’twere in scorn of eyes—reflecting gems, That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. #RichardIII 1.4.28-32 #ShakespeareSunday

I feel like I'm in my peak King John era, and really want to see a live performance of the play while the mood lasts. Is anyone aware of productions planned in the UK this year?

As of this morning, we've added Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labour's Lost to the list of plays that have furnished quotations for epitaphs and obituaries. AND THAT COMPLETES THE SET! Name a play, any play, I'll give you an epitaph. #ShaxEpitaphs

Yes, I know we're all focused on Iran. But the slaughter in Sudan continues, and this excellent piece in The @guardian recounts the mass atrocities that unfolded in El Fasher, Darfur, enabled by our pals in the UAE -- as world leaders looked away. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

It’s happened 🩷🩵

Are you a PG student or ECR interested in presenting at our conference ‘Clio Reframed: Women Writing History, 1500-1750’ in June? Bursaries to help with expenses are generously funded by @srsrensoc.bsky.social, so please send us your abstract by 14 March! clioreframed.hcommons.org/call-for-pap...

The latest #ShaxEpitaphs project update is available now. Featuring this interesting elegy for George Washington, blending passages from Henry VI Part 1 and Hamlet. 'WASHINGTON -- Is Dead.' Read all about it in The New Hampshire Gazette, 1 January 1800! shaxepitaphs.exeter.ac.uk/2026/02/26/f...

We are advertising 4 jobs at York for historians (1 year medieval, 2 years modern Britain and public history, 3 years modern China, and open ended modern Middle Eastern) features.york.ac.uk/history-jobs/

In terms of the brother of a living king, I think (despite the heroically dysfunctional Georgians who came close) it was George, Duke of Clarence, sent to the Tower by Edward IV in the 1470s.

Bad run of days for George, Duke of Clarence. Yesterday, the 548th anniversary of his death in the Tower of London (reputedly in a barrel of wine). Today, loses the coveted title of 'last brother of a reigning monarch to get himself arrested.'* Hope things will start looking up for George.

In future, any and all exam questions I compose will begin with “Whence”

In Southwark Cathedral yesterday to view the Shakespeare memorials, but I was struck above all by this plaque to Susanna Barford, who died in 1652, "aged 10 yeares, 13 weekes": THIS WORLD TO HER WAS BUT A TRAGED PLAY SHE CAME AND SAW'T DISLIK'T AND PASSD AWAY.

The #ShaxEpitaphs project has so far discovered almost 300 passages from Shakespeare inscribed on graves and memorials. BUT there are some passages we haven’t yet found that would serve wonderfully as epitaphs. So if you’re in the market, as it were, why not consider the following? (1/3)

The latest #ShaxEpitaphs project update is available now. Did you know that, thanks to Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare now have memorials in the Stratford churchyard where they lie buried -- with, needless to say, Shakespearean epitaphs? shaxepitaphs.exeter.ac.uk/2026/02/03/j...

Sound on, hats off.

Associate Professorship in literature 1660–1830, at St Peter's College/English Faculty, University of Oxford, just advertised: www.spc.ox.ac.uk/about/vacanc... Tell all your favourite (long) c18thists!

Today is International Map Day! One of our favourite maps in the collections is this map of Exeter, engraved by Frans Hogenberg in c 1618. Can you identify any landmarks that still exist today? 📷 Constable Maps 27; digitised by @dhlabexeter.bsky.social #InternationalMapDay #MappingOurExeter

Hoping he does it. Will be Wilde.

THE SCRIVENER: Here’s a good world the while! Who is so gross That cannot see this palpable device? Yet who so bold but says he sees it not? Heed the Scrivener #RichardIII 3.6 #ShakespeareSunday

If you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.

📢JOYCE YOUINGS LECTURE 2025-26 IS NEXT WEEK📢 Prof. Jane Whittle: Work & gender, status & power: the surprising history of everyday chores in early modern England 🗓️ 28 January, 3pm, followed by drinks reception 📍 Uni of Exeter & Zoom 🗃️ All welcome, register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/the-joyce-...

My contribution to the Colston statue debate is hot off the press, a mere five and a half years after the events of June 2020! journals.uio.no/acta/article...

Tragically, her words ‘appalled’ the rancorous, not their rancour. The stanza continues: ‘And suncke so deepe into their boyling brests, / That downe they let their cruell weapons fall, / And lowly did abase their loftie crests / To her faire presence, and discrete behests’. RIP.

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

The Canadian actor William Hutt (d. 2007) has a Shakespearean epitaph, and I must say it's one of my favourites: "When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer." Beautiful. #ShaxEpitaphs (1/3)

A #ShaxEpitaphs mystery.... Here I can just about make out 'not strain|d. It droppeth as the gentle rain | from Heaven.' But the first four(?) words look like something other than 'The quality of mercy'. Can anyone decipher this?? It's the memorial of Samuel Ball Green of Missouri (d. 1858).

The latest blog on the Shakespearean Graves website is up now! shaxepitaphs.exeter.ac.uk/2025/11/30/n... Would be genuinely fascinated to hear if anyone has further examples of Shakespearean headstone inscriptions from computer games 🪦👾

"I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like being asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be?" Thank you, Tom, for my first audition monologue, and much more.

Et, in Arcadia: We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it...

My co-authored chapter with Vicky Sparey on 'The Perils and Promises of Puberty' is soon to be published in Sarah Toulalan's book Early Modern Bodies. There are chapters by @amiebolissian.bsky.social , @davehitchcock.bsky.social & others. You can preorder here www.routledge.com/Early-Modern...

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of the fallen of WWI were buried with epitaphs drawn from Shakespearean. A selection can be found here: www.epitaphsofthegreatwar.com/tag/shakespe... None more haunting than the inscription for Alfred Dunne (aged 17) O MONSTROUS WORLD TO BE DIRECT AND HONEST IS NOT SAFE

No more noble British tradition than resigning over some nonsense everyone is only pretending to be angry about rather than all of the actually bad things you've done.

The website for the Shakespearean Graves project is now live -- check it out! shaxepitaphs.exeter.ac.uk #ShaxEpitaphs

I think our country sinks beneath the yoke. It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash Is added to her wounds. #Macbeth 4.3.49-51 #ShakespeareSunday

📢This Sunday in #Exeter! Historical reenactment based on historical research, in a former priory, converted to a domestic dwelling during the reformation. 'my perfect Sunday ... ' #EarlyModern 🗃️

Ah, it's Shakespeare's own infamous epitaph, 'Curst be he that moves my bones!' But no, this is Mary Caldwell (d. 1873), buried in Ipswich Massachusetts. The curse is surprisingly popular. And adding 'Shakespeare' at the bottom helps prove you're a literature lover, not some freak. #ShaxEpitaphs

What an incredible poet, what a loss

📢NEW MAILING LIST FOR CEMS!📢 Exeter's Centre for #EarlyModern Studies recently switched to a JiscMail list to allow people to join/unsubscribe more easily. FYI: we often host hybrid 🗃️ events. Interested? Instructions on how to join the mailing list are here: www.exeter.ac.uk/research/cen...

Exeter folk will be familiar with the equestrian statue of Sir Redvers Buller. There's no Shakespearean epitaph on the monument, but at its unveiling in 1905, a celebratory bamboo arch bore the inscription: "A soldier firm and sound of heart and of buxom valor" (Henry V, 3.6.25). (1/4)

I'm itching to share the 29(!) variations on 'after life's fitful fever he sleeps well' we've discovered so far as #ShaxEpitaphs, but don't want to try your patience. Just three: AFTER LIFE'S TROUBLED JOURNEY SHE SLEEPS WELL AFTER LIFE'S SCARLET FEVER I SLEEP WELL LIFE'S FITFUL PLAY IS O'ER

Hamlet: Alexander the Great is DIRT now www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/slo... Three Hamlets, musing on the skull: Christopher Eccleston at the West Yorkshire Playhouse (2002); Alan Cumming at the Donmar (1993); Ben Kingsley, RSC (1975)

London authorities removed Banksy’s latest mural of a judge attacking a protester. What remains is a shadowy stain, eerily reminiscent of a hooded Grim Reaper wielding a scythe, capturing attention in its own right.

Shakespearean epitaphs don't always reek of Bardolatry. 'Friendly Ben' Dekle was ready to start (or continue) an argument with Shakespeare from beyond the grave. 'LIFE IS NOT A "TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT," BUT RATHER AN ADVENTURE WRITTEN BY THE FINGERS OF GOD.' #ShaxEpitaphs

I see what you did there, Wichita Searchlight for January 13, 1906. #ShaxEpitaphs

The Shakespearean Graves project is up and running! Our social media game is a work in progress, but here's a short thread of #ShaxEpitaphs to whet your interest.

This is the Washington Post (yes, that one): names in Arabic and English, and ages, of all 18,500 children killed in Gaza, plus portraits and stories where available: www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...

Here’s one for early modernists: what is Norwich holding in this 1622 map (from Drayton’s ‘Poly-Olbion’)? Yes, Norwich had a big cathedral spire, but not two (and these maps usually indicate spires in the figure’s headdress). I’ve been tossing this about, and asking experts, for months. Stuck!