Led by a team of university scholars, Pre•Ambles are half-hour lectures that provide insight into a Chicago Shakespeare Theater production. Each talk bridges the worlds of scholarship and performance, examining the play in its historical context and the interpretive choices made by the director and design team.

March 2, 2013

Regina Buccola is an Associate Professor of English at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where she specializes in Shakespeare, non-Shakespearean Early Modern Drama, and Women's and Gender Studies.

March 3, 2013

Brett Foster teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Wheaton College. His forthcoming book is The Metropolis of Popery: English Encounters with Renaissance Rome.

March 9, 2013

Peter Kanelos is an Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature, Theater History and Dramaturgy at Loyola University Chicago. His recent publications includeThunder at a Playhouse: Essaying Shakespeare and the Early Modern Stage.

March 16, 2013

Stephen Bennett is an adjunct faculty member in the English Department at Roosevelt University, where he teaches courses in writing, the English Renaissance, and literature surveys.

March 24, 2013

Michael Dobson is Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. A former associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 1995 he played Henry VIII for Barbara Gaines in the Chicago Humanities Festival.