Dr Morgan will explore how Shakespeare’s plays show the way communities – national, political and domestic – form, survive and collapse. Hell, as Sartre tells us, is other people; but we must still live with them.

Focussing on the texts of Twelfth Night and The Tempest, the talk will explore the unstable role played by alcohol – which inspires amity and enmity in equal, mystifying measure – in Shakespeare’s vision of the convivial. Drama in London began partly in the gardens of taverns and Professor Morgan will look at the fears surrounding the communities formed in taverns and ale-houses in the early modern period, and the way Shakespeare depicts those communities as sources of rebellion, celebration and carnival in his plays.

Registration will open at 12pm with lunch served from 12-12.15pm, the talk beginning promptly at 12.15pm and conclude by 1.15pm.