That Shakespeare Life

We begin with one of Shakespeare's most memorable fashion jokes: Malvolio in  Twelfth Night , strutting in his yellow stockings. In the play, the color is comic, even ridiculous. Malvolio believes the stockings will make him attractive and impressive, but to everyone else, they make him look foolish. Shakespeare's audience would have recognized that clothing could carry meaning, and yellow was not...

In the decades that followed Shakepseare's death in 1616, England saw the arrival of events known as witch panics of Civil War–era Britain. It's easy to think that these witch panics and the heightened fear about witches was something that's post-Shakespeare, but the reality is that the the legal, religious, and cultural foundations were already being laid during Shakespeare's lifetime through dev...

Long before fashion magazines, personal style blogs, or carefully curated social media feeds, a 16 th  century German accountant named Matthäus Schwarz was documenting his wardrobe in extraordinary detail.  Between 1520 and 1560, Schwarz commissioned artists to create more than 130 precise watercolor portraits of him on parchment, recording the clothing he wore at different stages of his life. The...

As you will know from listening to THat Shakespeare Life, there's a ruch history behind every small object from the life of William Shakespeare Whether it's clocks, clothes, pencils, or tablets, we love using the objects of Shakespeare' world to get closer to the real lives of the people who lived tehre.   WHich is why I was delighted to learn abotu Catherine Richardson's latest book titled Shakes...

Immortalised as Elsinore in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet , Kronborg Castle is one of the most important Renaissance castles in Northern Europe. A real castle, and historical stronghold that sits in the town of Helsingør , Denmark. Kronborg is as fascinating as it is beautiful.  Our guest this week is  Laura Kiel, the Operations Coordinator at Kronborg Castle, where she plays a key role in car...

Shakespeare's plays and poems are filled with birds—from familiar crows, swans, and sparrows to species that would have seemed rare, exotic, or unusual in Renaissance England. But these birds are more than decorative details. They carry symbolism, reflect the natural world Shakespeare knew, and reveal how people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries understood the animals around them. In this...

Shakespeare mentions cats over 30 times in his plays, including to talk about a gib cat, a musk-cat, cats chasing mice and even making perfume. It's obvious that cats were present for Shakespeare's lifetime, but what do these references in the plays show us about their place in society and perhaps in people's homes for Shakespeare's England? Did Shakespeare keep a pet cat, would they have been use...

Shakespeare mentions "housewife" in his works 14 times, including to identify both a "good housewife" as well as a "false housewife." These descriptions appear alongside one accusation that a woman was being someone's "franklin's housewife."   As an essential part of daily living in Shakespeare's England, I wanted to track down exactly what was involved in being a 16-17 th century housewife, and t...

With it estimated that travel from Stratford Upon Avon to London might take days or even weeks depending on the weather and mode of transportation, it's only logical to think that Shakespeare must have had a place to stay when he was in London for work.   There is a court case in which Shakespeare is mentioned by name that places him as a lodger with the Mountjoy family on Silver Street in 1604. T...

In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, there's a lively scene set in Eastcheap, inside the bustling Boar's Head Tavern, where the roguish Sir John Falstaff trades wit and wine with the young Prince Hal—England's future Henry V. To Shakespeare's audience, this wasn't some distant or imagined world. Eastcheap was real. The taverns were real. And the cups of ale and small beer passed across those tables...

" Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the sixteenth-century English   countryside. Sounds of ploughs rattle in distant fields, and the delightful   squeals of children at play fill the air. It is quiet, you think, quieter than   you are used to, but loud and lively all the same. The air is pure, and it   smells sweet with the natural floral fragrances of honeysuckle and apple   blossom and lav...

Hamlet wagers 6 Barbary horses against 6 French swords. Falstaff talks about fighting with a Barbary hen. Bassanio in Merchant of Venice talks about travelling merchants going to foreign lands including "Tripolis, Mexico and England, Lisbon, Barbary, and India" There are also an additional 5 references to Barbary horses.   The Barbary States were Algeria, Tunisia, Tripolis, and Morroco. These were...

In Stratford Upon Avon, where William Shakespeare was born, there is a house that was built in 1530, while King Henry VIII was ruling England. This house was there when Shakespeare was living in the town, and the owners have direct connections to Shakespeare himself. Today, the house is known as Wisson House and the thoughtfully preserved historical property has been updated with modern amenities...

Elaborate theatrical performances in Shakespeare's lifetime presented before the reigning monarch were known as court masques.   These intricate and complex stories were presented in grand fashion, sparing no expense on costumes, props, and special effects. The most famous masque has to be that of Robert Dudley who hired actual performers from the Comedia del Arte in Italy to perform amazing feats...

In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream , Puck has a line that says "And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen..." In Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio uses this term again saying, "What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty..." In a similar description again from Midsummer, Lysander says "Fair Helena, who more engilds the night Than all you...

Christopher Marlowe is one of the most fascinating—and mysterious—figures of Shakespeare's lifetime. A university-educated playwright at a time when that alone set him apart, Marlowe rose quickly through London's theater world, dazzling audiences with bold language, ambitious characters, and stories that pushed the boundaries of what the stage could do.  But Marlowe's life wasn't confined to poetr...

In Shakespeare's England, the middle of summer was a time of celebration. While the summer season begins at May Day, the longest day of the year, from June 23 into the 24th, was celebrated as the holiday of Midsummer, and Christianized as St. John's Eve and St. John's Day. It was the longest day of the year, and for the life of William Shakespeare, this holiday was marked with celebrations of feas...

Shakespeare is famous for his costume changes in his plays, including characters that swap genders and seemingly fool the world as their true identity simply by a change of clothes. Since Shakespeare's playing companies were all male, and still manage to portray some of the most powerful women characters ever created on the stage, we have to think there was indeed great power in costume. What was...

In Shakespeare's plays, there are over 150 references to the word "hair" across which Shakespeare talks about a barber fixing someone's hair, about hair being dyed, about losing your hair being a natural product of old age, combing your hair, and even the weight of someone's hair. Clearly, there was a significant cultural focus on the care and maintenance of one's carefully selected coif. But exac...

In Shakespeare's plays, he uses the word "gauntlet" a total of 6 times. In one instance, the stage directions declare that a character "throws down his gauntlet." In  Hamlet , stage directions again refer to a gauntlet by saying that attendants bring "foils and gauntlets" into the scene of Act V.   But do you know what you should be seeing on stage in these moments? Do you know what object Shakesp...

Zounds! Your Bunched Back toad! In Shakespeare's plays we find a hoard of truly fabulous one liners, zingers, and impressive insults that frequent the lips of our favorite characters.  When they were written in the 16th century, some of the words we find most hilarious today were actually bordering on a line between legal and illegal, and even sometimes blasphemous, which in a Protestant England w...

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet declares "Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek" Katharina in Taming of the SHrew talks about painting your face, and Timon of Athens makes a connection between painting and your face saying "wear them, betray with them: whore still; Paint till a horse may mire upon your face, A pox of wrinkles!" And of course, Hamlet h...

Immigration, labor tensions, and social unrest were pressing realities in Shakespeare's England—and few events capture that strain more vividly than the 1517 uprising known as Evil May Day. In this week's episode, historian Shannon McSheffrey joins us to unpack the economic frustrations, guild restrictions, and growing immigrant communities that fueled this riot in Tudor London. From the role of t...

For the 16th century, a vagrant was someone who operated outside of societal norms, someone who moved around without a fixed home, or produced a profit without the oversight of a noble patron. In a culture that highly prized both hierarchy and organization, someone who fell outside these categories was cast under severe scrutiny, seen as a potential threat, and faced harsh punishments specifically...

In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 , Hotspur delivers a chilling threat against King Richard:  "I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak  Nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him  To keep his anger still in motion."  It's a line rooted in the politics of kingship and rebellion—but it also hinges on something strikingly practical. The idea of teaching a starling to speak wasn't poetic fancy. It...