That Shakespeare Life

For centuries, theater historians have glossed over noy only the location, but actually argued over the very existence of a theater at Newington Butts. Originally established as an archery range under Henry VIII during a time when learning the sport of archery was required for all young men, the high ground at Newington Butts just outside of London proper would morph into a popular theater destina...

William Shakespeare's father was a man named John Shakespeare. When you study William's life you often hear about John Shakespeare, as many references to glove making in Shakespeare's plays like the glover's pairing knife in Merry Wives of Windsor come from an intimate knowledge with the glove making trade, which most assume came from William's father John. When it comes to the life of John Shakes...

In 16th century England, Christmas time was a season of disorder, with many of the holiday celebrations centering around the idea of Misrule, role reversal, and a celebration of general chaos as part of the festivities. Which makes it surprising that the one place you would expect to find extreme order, the Inns of Court, which were essentially Law School for England's budding lawyers, was also th...

During the century following Shakespeare's life, the government tried to end playoing, shutting down theaters and passing orders against plays entirely. During this moment in history when it would have been easy for the legacy of William Shakespeare to die completely, one man who remembered William Shakespeare from his childhood, would champion the cause of theater, plays, and his mentor, William...

History remembers Christopher Marlowe as a contemporary of William Shakespeare that was prone to violence. Arrested multiple times for his association with fights, duels, and even murder, scholars around the world have suggested that Christopher Marlowe had a hot temper which often ran him afoul of the local authorities in London. In addition to achieving a university education and the social rank...

In William Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 2, the character Jack Cade declares himself Lord Mortimer of London by striking London Stone and then sitting upon the stone to declare his royalty. While it makes a dramatic scene for a theatrical play, this story was based in actual history and the way Shakespeare tells the story tells us as modern theater goers something interesting about the Tudor opinion...

When William Shakespeare died, he left on his gravestone a formidable curse, warning anyone who dared steal his bones after death. You can see this curse today on his gravestone inside Holy Trinity Church and it reads   Good friend, for Jesus' sake forebear To dig the dust enclosed here Blessed be the man who spares these stones And cursed be he that moves my bones. Sinister, and comical today whe...

The English playwright Thomas Kyd is one of Shakespeare's contemporaries who arguably has as much, if not more, influence on the development of Renaissance theater than even the bard himself. Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy is thought to have introduced to 16th century English theater a tragic format Shakespeare would later apply in his famous tragedy, Hamlet . Little is known about the life of Thomas K...

Shakespeare's play King Lear is based upon the story of the ancient British King who founded Leicester in England, written by Geoffrey Monmouth. Monmouth based his story on real elements of Leicester's history, including the Jewry Wall and ancient roman tombs, some of which are still there in Leicester today. For the 16th century, this story was already hugely popular when Shakespeare decided to a...

In the late 1590s as William Shakespeare was writing Henry V, and the famous battle scene of Agincourt, there was a cultural battle going on between the older and younger generations of men in England concerning the use of the longbow. As Shakespeare staged Henry V in 1605, he did so with the obvious absence of the very longbows that are considered responsible for the English victory at the Battle...

The 16th century was the first time English history, and the first time in most of European history, that the average person started carrying a weapon as a matter of daily life. The rapier specifically came into fashion in England in the mid 16th century, and while it plays a prominent role in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare mentions the rapier specifically over 30 times in his plays i...

Have you ever wondered why Shakespeare wrote sonnets or what purpose it served to learn iambic pentameter? Here to share with us the history of sonnets for the 16th century and explain why a playwright wrote poetry is our guest, Stanley Wells.

Society in Elizabethan England is well known for being divided by class. There were workers, peasants, aristocracy, and even a kind of middle class but what was the definition of a labourer? When it comes to exploring the roles of characters like Ariel and Caliban in Shakespeare's Tempest it is important to understand the 16th century mindset towards labor. Under Catholic England, the monasteries...

Following its prominent use in the decisive victory of the English against the French in the Battle of Agincourt, the English longbow was a stalwart image of English patriotism well into the 1590s. Having been a favorite weapon for the famous Kings of England like Henry V, but also Edward III and Elizabeth I's father, Henry VIII, the English longbow was a tried and true military technology that wa...

Tracey Hill is here to tell us about Whifflers in 16th c England. A traditional fixture in pageants that appears in Shakespeare's Henry V.

Inside Tiffany Stern's book titled " Shakespeare in Parts"  which she co-authored with Simon Palfrey, there is a picture of a piece of paper captioned "The part of Orlando from Robert Greene's Orlando Furioso" from the 1590s. The image represents the historical reality that for Shakespeare, plays were always distributed in parts --meaning a single actor would have had a copy of what his character...

When Queen Elizabeth sought to root out Catholic uprising in her country, and to quelch potential plots against her in England, it is well known that she turned to spies and spymasters within her court to find, identify, and execute anyone who was a threat to the crown. One key method Elizabeth used to make sure the new generation of English boys supported her government and the Protestant religio...

Having been considered lost for centuries, and a huge mystery for historians, our guest today believes he has located the final resting place of the Lost Colony, and indeed, has uncovered artifacts that suggest they were never lost in the first place. Today we welcome Scott Dawson, archaeologist and author of The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island to tell the story of Roanoke Colony that so captured...

Without the actual body of Richard III whose shallow grave was long lost to history centuries ago, scholars have used texts, like Shakespeare, to try and find evidence for the truth about what actually happened to Richard III. For one team of archaeologists, however, it was not enough to leave the sinister Richard III lost to history with more questions than answers. So in 2012, in conjunction wit...

When William Shakespeare first began his career, we see evidence in his plays as well as life decisions that he was an ambitious man, almost constantly trying to secure connections with the right people in the right places to move his reputation upwards in society. One very key way we see Shakespeare intentionally seek out forward motion for his career is by his connection to Richard Field. Field...

One of the most romantic moments from Shakespeare's plays is when he writes Henry V stumbling his way through a French declaration of love and wedding proposal to Catherine of Valois in Shakespeare's Henry V. It is gorgeous scene and one of my favorites, but it presents a few questions since England was strongly pro-England at this point in history, even leaning anti-French (having taken measures...

In Elizabethan England, there was a strong overlap in the use of drugs as medicine and using them for magic. Real physical diseases like epilepsy or psychological conditions like the pathological jealousy we see exhibited in Shakepseare's Othello, are all conditions that were just beginning to be fully understood by the medical community of the 16th century. One of the primary drugs used to treat...

Underneath a housing redevelopment in Whitechapel, England, archaeologists have unearthed what is believed to be the remains of The Red Lion theater. The Red Lion predates Shakespeare's Globe and is thought to be the earliest purpose built theater known to have been built in the city since Roman-times. Built by John Brayne in 1567, the Red Lion was a predecessor to Brayne's next construction on Th...

In the 16th century as Shakespeare was writing plays like Alls Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar, Shakespeare turned to classical philosophers like Cicero and Isocrates to find tales exploring not only what constituted decent, or proper behavior, but what happened to people when those invisible rules of decorum were altered or violated. We've long lauded Shakespeare for including the...

One of the best ways many Shakespeare scholars use to explore the real historical counterparts to the historical figures that show up in Shakespeare's plays is to examine what they looked like. Centuries before the advent of photography, when you wanted to capture someone's likeness and preserve it, history used paintings. People like Henry VIII, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour, Edward VI and many ot...