Day 2: Shakespeare 400 Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia

The second day of the Shakespeare 400 Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, to commemorate 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare included presentations of Hamlet and Julius Caesar, as well as sessions on villains, parodies, music, motion, love, and bad dreams.

The morning sessions were held at the Tbilisi State University and moved to the Rustaveli National Theatre in the afternoon.

The audience heard of ‘vaulting ambition’ – action and procrastination – decision and indecision – consciousness and morality – comedy and seriousness – the language of truth – the influencer and the influenced – and the sound and the fury.

Shakespeare’s works were discussed alongside John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ (1667), Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Biographia Literararia’ (1817), ‘Ulysses’ (1918) and ‘Finnigan’s Wake’ (1939) by James Joyce, Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot: a tragicomedy in two acts’ (1949), and Iris Murdoch’s ‘The Black Prince’ (1973).

The day concluded with a documentary film by David Maziashvili about Robert Sturua’s version of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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