![]() The Shakespeare Institute was founded 65 years ago by the theatre historian Allardyce Nicoll, with the intention of creating a "Shakespeare university" for students and the public, which would draw together the resources of the local Royal Shakespeare Company theatre and the libraries at the University of Birmingham and the Birthplace Trust. He still gives at least one guest class every academic year and is often consulted by the institute's students about their research projects. For many, Wells embodies the kind of generous and benevolent elder statesman who might have made all the difference in one of Shakespeare's tragedies – one might compare him to the grey-haired Lafeu in All's Well That Ends Well, an unwavering proponent of honour and charity. "He still has an office at the trust, in which he can be found writing most of the time when he isn't lecturing somewhere," says Dobson. Now 86, Wells shows no signs of swapping the stage for the stalls. Just the other day I was asked how one might go about setting the sonnets to Brazilian drumming."ĭobson, who's 55, leans forward holding up his hands in a gesture somewhere between that of a saintly supplicant and one carrying a loaded tea tray: "People see the word Shakespeare by your name and presume you must have the answer." Which is fair enough, really, because – between the institute's seven professors and fellows, two full-time librarians, associated academics and honorary fellows – every trust with the word Shakespeare in it can be traced to this unimposing terrace on Church Street, about halfway between the house where the Bard was born and the church where he is buried. ![]() "But that's one of the great things about my job: I'm perpetually doing things for which I am absolutely not trained. It's a real worry, he half jokes, in his sun-drenched office at Mason Croft, the 18th-century townhouse where the institute is headquartered. ![]() Not to mention the World Shakespeare Congress in July – a week-long programme split between Stratford and London – which, as Professor Michael Dobson, director of the institute (or, in his words, "theatre-goer and failed actor"), explains, presents the "wonderful logistical challenge of getting 800 academics on buses, on time". ![]()
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