Shakespeare came to Downing Street last night when 30 children from London schools acted in No 11 for Education Secretary Michael Gove and the Chancellor’s wife Frances Osborne.
It was a reception to honour and thank the Shakespeare Schools Festival, the charity that last year organised public performances by 17,500 pupils from 700 schools up and down Britain .
Special schools, disabled schools and primary schools, said chief executive Penelope Middelboe, are at the forefront of the 2013 festival, which hopes to put 25,000 youngsters on stage from Plymouth to Inverness in October.
Last night the children excelled in excerpts from Macbeth, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry V. “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” thundered one actor. The emphasis on regicide was not lost on Gove, who wondered if Mr Cameron in No 10 might be listening through the wall. “Plotting, ambition, they’re not just found in Shakespeare,” Gove announced in theatrical tones. “Within these very walls such things go on …” The children looked horrified.
