That Shakespeare Life

William Shakespeare mentions the word "book" over 140 times across his works, showing not only their prominent place in society but their popularity as well. There are several kinds of books referenced in Shakespeare's plays including prayer books, muster books, horn books, and more but one particular kind of book seen as a novelty for Shakespeare's lifetime that could be taken anywhere the owner...

Sandals, boots, spurs, and cobbled shoes are all mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, found in works like Alls Well That Ends Well, Coriolanus, and even Hamlet where the Danish Prince talks about his "raz'd shoes." All this mention of footwear in the works of the bard has us wondering exactly what kind of shoes William Shakespeare might have worn during his lifetime. While portraits of the bard don't...

There may not have been indoor plumbing in Shakespeare's lifetime, but going to the bathroom still involved cleaning up. One aspect you may be surprised to learn you share with William Shakespeare is that he, too, used various kinds of paper to go to the restroom. Shakespeare's plays provide references to the jacques, jordan, and chamber pot, all options for using the restroom in Tudor England, an...

When William Shakespeare was just 24 years old, a man named Timothy Bright would introduce a system of writing called charactery to England, setting off a wildfire of shorthand manuals, methods, and training where people flocked to learn this new, symbol based, system of writing that allowed the spoken word to be captured verbatim in real time. Notes and letters from philosophers and travellers in...

  Leicester's Men are a group of actors who formed what many consider to be the founding company of English Renaissance Theater. Established with the sponsorship of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the playing company travelled around England and abroad performing plays with the legal protection of being in the Earls' service. The company was unique for its' time in that they separated themselves...

In 1603, as King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England following the death of Elizabeth I, one of the people James' tapped to walk in his coronation parade was William Shakespeare, along with the entire Lord Chamberlain's Men company who received the official patronage of James I to become the King's Men. The new title and status brought big changes to the performance of plays, the s...

The wig was first introduced to England around 1572, when Shakespeare was only 8 years old. The fashion would catch on very quickly in England, promoted by the Queen herself, who was known for wearing wigs in her older years, and defined by her naturally curly red hair in her youth. There are over 100 references to "hair" across Shakespeare's works, many of them calling attention to the color of t...

Bridewell Palace was built in the early 16th century as a residence for King Henry VIII. The palace was a unique structure because it deviated from the architectural designs of the time period by not having a great hall and featuring an elaborate staircase. It was also constructed around a large inner courtyard. Under Edward VI in the 1550s, Bridewell Palace was given to the City of London as a ho...

Born in Portugal, Dr. Roderigo Lopez fled to England in the 16th century as a Jewish refugee. His family was Jewish, forced to convert to Catholicism, and when he arrived in England he joined the Church of England to become Protestant while still practicing Jewish rituals at home. Serving at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1576, Lopez rose through the ranks as a doctor until he was the Chief Physici...

In Henry VI Part I , William Shakespeare presents one of history's most famous characters, a woman, named Joan La Pucelle, known today as Joan of Arc. For the French, she was a truly holy woman, chaste, and pure. She was also a brilliant military strategist and a force to be reckoned with in battle. Nicknamed "the Maid of Orleans," the real Joan of Arc was a heroine for France during the Hundred Y...

William Braford is most well known today as the man who served as the second governor of Plymouth Colony, leaving Europe for Virginia in 1620 aboard the Mayflower . Prior to this infamous voyage, Bradford was an Englishman whose life overlapped that of William Shakespeare, having been born in Yorkshire, England, when Shakespeare was 26 years old. There's no evidence to suggest Shakespeare knew Bra...

Portraits of ladies and gentlemen from the late 16th century show men and women adorned in all manner of finery, including everything from flowing gowns, to magnificent swords, and even those infamous Tudor ruff collars,but what exactly did it take to get into all those fine outfits? When Shakespeare surveyed his closet in the morning before he got dressed for the day, were there certain items he...

When we study court in Shakespeare history the phrase "appeared at court" or "performed at court" frequently gets used to describe what Shakespeare was doing at various points of his life. However, the overlap between "court" legally (as in, where you go for a legal trial) and the social phenomenon of Renaissance England where the monarch gathered their "court" together can make it hard to know wh...

When William Shakespeare first arrived in London sometime in the 1580s, James Burbage was already making waves in the early modern performance industry by establishing The Theater, a playhouse which the Burbages owned. After a fight with the owner of the land on which The Theater was built, the building itself would be dismantled by the Burbages and William Shakespeare who helped the Burbages clan...

In the 1950s when Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was adapted into West Side Story , popular culture in the US resonated with the gang culture and street fighting depicted on stage because the brass knuckled "rumbles" taking place on streets like those in New York City were current events of the day. Turns out, historically, these gang fights were a real issue for Shakespeare's lifetime as well, an...

It seems even William Shakespeare had household floors to keep clean. While it likely wouldn't have been the actual William doing the majority of the sweeping in his household, one item the bard seems to have been familiar with through his nineteen uses of the word "sweep" and one use of the word "besom" across his works is the household broom used for sweeping floors. The bard uses "broom" at lea...

In Cymbeline , Act I Scene 1 Posthumus Leonatus says "I'll drink the words you send though ink be made of gall" and in Twelfth Night Sir Toby Belch calls attention to a particular kind of ink when he says "Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen…" in Act III Scene 2. Both of these scenes from Shakespeare's plays are referencing the most popular kind of ink used in S...

Shakespeare mentions the word "crocodile" five times in his plays, but crocodiles not being native to England must have been introduced to the bard from outside his natural habitat there in London. The crocodile itself was well known in English literature, having been written about in association with Egypt and Africa by writers like Pliny the Elder centuries prior to Shakespeare. This particular...

In Elizabethan England, the basilisk was a feared and hateful creature, capable of killing someone with just a glance. Of the 8 references to basilisks in Shakespeare's plays, half of these invoke the reputation of being able to kill with a look. European bestiaries record the basilisk as a legendary serpent ruling as King of the reptiles and while the folklore far outpaces the science, recent his...

In Elizabethan England on the corner of Friday Street and Bread Street was a fine dining and drinking establishment called the Mermaid Tavern. The building itself burned down in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but the legend of this storied tavern lives on through the records of people like Ben Jonson and 17th century travel writer Thomas Coryat, who wrote about the Mermaid Tavern in the early 1...

In 1588, one man named Tom Bright introduced an innovative new method for quickly writing down what you hear during a live performance, publishing a manual he called "Charactery." A term of Bright's own invention, Charactery is the first English version of an ancient method of shorthand dating back to the time of Cicero, that allowed anyone to pirate versions of live performance, provided they had...

In Elizabethan England two of the most popular forms of public entertainment were animal baiting and hunting. Bull and bear baiting happened in a dedicated arena while hunting was usually done on private lands or hunting parks where private, usually very elite, groups of people would gather for the hunt. What each of these sports has in common is they both employ use of dogs. Hunting dogs were rai...

Bull Ring market in Birmingham, England, UK was first known as Corn Cheaping because in the 12th century, which is when we have the first reference to Corn Cheaping, it was used as a corn market. Corn Cheaping had an iron ring setup on a grassy section of Corn Cheaping that was used as a bull baiting arena, where bulls who had been selected for slaughter would be tied and baited for entertainment...

As students of Shakespeare's lifetime, often we see the phrase "of certain status" to describe 16-17th century limitations on clothes, housing, and other material realities for various people. Particular if you study Elizabethan sumptuary laws, it seems like society was strictly controlled based on social status, and one's place in society was decided at birth, with little mobility allowed. The li...

In Elizabethan England, the Queen is immortalized in woodcuts that show her fondness for the sport of hawking. By the time James I comes to the throne in 1603, hawking is surpassed by a form of hunting called par force where animals like dogs and horses are used to round up prey. While the practical aspect of hunting animals for meat was utilized in these hunting expeditions, arguably the primary...