Match sponsor: King’s Lynn Shakespeare Festival

We look forward to welcoming King’s Lynn Shakespeare Festival as our virtual match sponsor for Tuesday night’s game at home to King’s Lynn Town.

The next festival is now set to take place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of April 2022.

The works of the Bard will be celebrated in workshops, performance and discussion in Britain’s oldest working theatre, the very place where it is thought that the great playwright himself performed in 1592.

Andrew Jarvis, a Chesterfield lad, and a lifelong Spireite for over 60 years – who is now founder of the King’s Lynn Shakespeare Festival – explains that he wants to get the message out to football followers that the festival is open to anyone.

He said: “I would love that football crowd at The Walks (King’s Lynn’s ground) to be the very ones whom I can enable to see that Shakespeare is something that they can enjoy as well – as participants in a similar kind of storytelling to football.

“That Shakespeare is not simply the preserve of the middle classes – I want to get rid of that subconscious feeling of a ‘No Entry’ sign awaiting them as they approach Shakespeare.

“Shakespeare and Football. Both equal. Both elements containing the theatrical, both telling stories – both dramatic. I want them to walk through the doors of the Guildhall as well as The Walks.

“Shakespeare clearly, for me, expected his audience to ‘listen’. Theseus in The Dream says on several occasions that he will ‘hear’ the Mechanical’s play.

“So, in the same way that the Globe audience was made up of ordinary working-class folk – why shouldn’t today’s audiences be made up of the same people?

“All of them ready to hear and listen – albeit against all current cultural influences. That’s what I want to aim for as a Shakespeare Festival.”

To find out more about the King’s Lynn Shakespeare Festival, please visit www.kingslynnshakespeare.com