Sir Stanley Wells delivers the 2017 Rose Theatre Shakespeare Birthday Lecture. The lecture is entitled ‘The Genius of Shakespeare’. The session is chaired by Richard Wilson. The Shakespearean actor Andrew Jarvis receives the Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Shakespeare Association on behalf of the great director John Barton. Sir Stanley Wells is Britain’s preeminent Shakespeare scholar and one of the world’s leading experts on the Elizabethan theatre. His many bestselling books on the Bard include Shakespeare, Sex and Love, Shakespeare & Co. and Shakespeare For All Time. He is the General Editor of both the Oxford and the Penguin Shakespeare editions, and President of Stratford’s Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Sir Stanley is also one of the best-loved lecturers on TV and radio and at literary festivals, and this recording of his 2017 Rose Theatre Birthday Lecture is a spell-binding display of all his talents as a Shakespeare interpreter, raconteur and performer. Recorded on April 27, 2017 at the Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames. Recorded and edited by Anna Ilona Rajala.