Thank you for your interest in our advent calendar. Thank you for the many messages, tweets and comments.  As a special treat on the night before Christmas we offer a  bumper selection of stocking fillers for fans of Shakespeare.

The Bodleian Shakespeare: A treasure lost… and regained Emma Smith reveals how Oxford University mobilised alumni support to bring Shakespeare’s First Folio back to the Bodleian library over 200 years after it was lost.

Approaching Shakespeare  a 10 lecture  series focusing on  plays by Shakespeare, each accompanied by an e-book.   Rather than providing overarching readings or interpretations, the series aims to show the variety of different ways we might understand Shakespeare, the kinds of evidence that might be used to strengthen our critical analysis, and, above all, the enjoyable and unavoidable fact that Shakespeare’s plays tend to generate our questions rather than answer them.

The entire First Folio of 36 plays from 1623, in their original spelling and orthography, presented in ePub format. The texts were originally prepared by Trevor Howard-Hill for use in his single colume concordances to Shakespeare (OUP, 1969f). They have since been reformatted to modern standards and carefully proofread by staff of Oxford University Press’ Shakespeare Department for use in the new “Old Spelling” Oxford Shakespeare, under the general editorship of Dr Stanley Wells.

And if  by Christmas you have had your fill of Shakespeare, enjoy our Not Shakespeare series on Elizabethan and Jacobean popular theatre including ‘Arden of Faversham’ and ‘The Roaring Girl’. Blackly camp tragedies, cross-dressing and sexual choices. It’s all in there.

All free to use and re-use under Creative Commons licences from Oxford Podcasts.

Best wishes from Oxford University Computing Services.