Shakespeare comes back to Coventry

A near sell-out crowd looked on as Coventry’s medieval jewel, St Mary’s Hall, sparkled into life with music, poetry and Shakespeare on the evening of October 9.

Historian Jonathan Foyle, actors from the city’s Criterion Theatre and a trombone quartet playing music from the Renaissance shaped a narrative to celebrate Coventry’s Tudor Inheritance, The Wars Of The Roses, The Royal Tapestry and Shakespeare.

It was the third event in the hall staged by Tudor Coventry Community Interest Company, a group of enthusiasts who came together three years ago to highlight the hall and the treasures it houses and raise the profile of Coventry’s extraordinary, and much over-looked, late medieval history.

Their chief focus is a fund-raising campaign to bring better lighting and presentation to the hall’s early sixteenth century tapestry, now emerging as a hidden national treasure that warrants much more attention and research than it has had in the past.

Coventry Society’s Peter Walters, a member of the Tudor Coventry group, said, “With 2021 coming up, this is the time to highlight and better care for Coventry’s heritage, both modern and medieval. We believe that the city has so many wonderful stories to tell, and should make much more of them. Clearly, the public’s response to the events we’ve held in St Mary’s Hall so far tell us that we are not alone in this. We will be back with new events next year”.