Madness and Folly at Ardingly College

Madness and Folly at Ardingly College

The fifth Ardingly Shakespeare Conference took place on 13 March 2017 and the theme this year was ‘madness and folly’.

Ardingly students were joined by pupils from eight other schools, students from Sussex University, the distinguished Shakespearean scholars Emeritus Professor Kiernan Ryan (Royal Holloway), Professor Glyn Parry (Roehampton),  Professor Richard Wilson (Kingston), and the actor Paapa Essiedu, who has recently played Hamlet for the RSC and Edgar in King Lear.

Olga Krasnenkova and Freya Thursfield chaired keynote speaker and discussion sessions with confidence and grace; 65 research papers were delivered on topics such as “Unbridled folly: horses in Shakespeare” (Donella Torcassi), “Ophelia: good girl gone mad?” (Jessica St John Dennis) and “Did Macbeth have Mad Cow Disease?”(Anthony Lovat). After an exhausting day delivering papers, listening to papers and discussing Shakespeare, the conference  finished with a light-hearted theatrical interpretation of a selection of mad scenes in Shakespeare’s work, directed by Miss Marshall-MacBain.