Sir Trevor Nunn gives inaugural lecture

Sir Trevor Nunn hailed William Shakespeare as England's first director in his inaugural speech as the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at St Catherine's College. Sir Trevor gave the lecture, titled 'All the World's a Stage - Shakespeare, the Player Poet', in the Bernard Sunley Theatre on Monday 18 October. The former Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre told his audience, which included Oxford University students: 'Many students at school and university still inwardly groan at the mention of Shakespeare. My aim is to turn you on to Shakespeare. Oxford has been for centuries a vital centre for Shakespeare scholarship.' Looking closely at a variety of plays to illustrate his lecture, Sir Trevor discussed many aspects of Shakespeare's craft, beginning with a focus on Elizabethan London as an 'embryonic gold-rush community' of theatrical inspiration. He also discussed the idea of Shakespeare as using his characters as a mouthpiece for his own thoughts on acting and theatre, using Hamlet as a source, and considered the suggestion that Shakespeare was possibly the 'first director of any kind in England. He also told the audience about his own experience as a student: 'When I was a student, some days I wanted to be an actor and other days a director, but every day I wanted to be immersed in the world of theatre.