That Shakespeare Life

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...

One of the most notorious castles in all of English history is Pontefract Castle. Just one step down in the levels of punishment a criminal could receive short of being sent to the Tower of London was to find themselves imprisoned in one of the town castles, and none was more notorious in it's reputation for death and imprisonment than Pontefract Castle.  Known as Pomfret in Shakespeare's plays, t...

Like so many of Shakespeare's words, even a single line can have an elaborate history. When it comes to the word "orange" there is just such a history to be found if you know where to look.    For the 16th century, oranges were a staple item for seasonal eating on tables from the average person all the way to the nobility. While the real "rage" in history for it being fashionable to have orange ho...

For the entirety of Shakespeare's life, the Tabard Inn was a well established public inn on the mainstreet of Southwark, leading to London Bridge, and it was famous because Chaucer had set the opening scene of The Canterbury Tales there, but according to a 27 page hand written document once owned by famous antiquary David Laing, the Tabard Inn served as a frequent meeting place for William Shakesp...

  In 1572, when William Shakespeare was 8 years old, a large supernova streaked across the sky making a lifelong mark in the memory of not just a young William Shakespeare, but across the consciousness of all of England who saw it that night. At the height of Renaissance thought, and during the time Galileo was presenting his ideas in Italy, William Shakespeare was writing Hamlet , King Lear , and...

We sit down to a properly set table and expect to see at minimum a fork, knife, and a spoon. More elaborate settings may have more utensils, but for William Shakespeare, his lifetime was the first moment in England's history when dining habits were caught somewhere between the age of eating with one's hands, and the advent of proper utensils at the dining table. While the invention of the fork hap...

Do you know the origin of the word "whiskey"? Turns out we have Scotland to thank for not only the drink we know as whiskey today, but the word we use to describe it as well. The earliest record of whiskey on paper happens in 1494 with a reference to aqua vitae in the Exchequer Rolls, but there was a great interest--and a good deal of illicit smuggling of Scotch whiskey-- happening not just in Sha...

The Paston Letters are a collection of over 1,000 pieces of correspondence between 1422 and 1509 which, while never intended to last into the modern era, have been preserved throughout the centuries for the unique light they shed on the everyday events in 15th century England. John Paston was a lawyer in England, and while the letters sometimes represent the communication of John Paston to members...

With court records of Mary Queen of Scots playing cards, as well as James I of England preferring the game Maw when entertaining royal dignitaries, we know that playing cards was not just popular for royals but a pastime at all levels of society during Shakespeare's lifetime, and it was a relatively new arrival to England overall. Playing cards did not reach Europe until 1360, and the first mentio...

The first historical written reference to a separate undergarment for women is found in the wardrobe accounts of Mary Tudor. There, the records indicate Mary had  "Item for making of one peire of bodies of crymsen satin| Item for making two pairs of bodies for petticoats of crymsen satin | Item for making a pair of bodies for a Verthingall of crymsen Grosgrain" The fashion of using a "pair of bodi...

During the life of William Shakespeare, plain water was often unclean and filtration, while available, was rudimentary at best. It was not safe to drink the water of the Thames river, and in order to compensate for a general lack of fresh drinking water, the most popular beverage in Elizabethan England even for regular meal times, was beer or ale. Drunkenness was a common occurrence, as was the co...

Throughout Shakespeare's lifetime one of the most widely circulated and reported on current events was the state of the Holy Roman Empire. Ruled for much of Shakespeare's lifetime by an eccentric named Rudolf II, who secluded himself in Bohemia to the neglect of his Empire. Rudolf II and his weird choice to isolate himself in Bohemia would have been enough to make Shakespeare's references to Bohem...