That Shakespeare Life

From rapiers to broadswords, weapons fly in Shakespeare's plays, but how many of these dramatic weapons were an established part of daily life for the bard? Did people really carry around rapiers and daggers in the streets of London or at home in Stratford upon Avon? Find out when we talk with author and professional sword maker, Sean Flynt, as he introduces us to the weapons of Shakespeare's life...

Whether it's Lear calling Goneril a plague-sore, or Mercutio cursing the families in Romeo and Juliet by saying "A plague on both your houses!" Shakespeare's works testify to the fact that rampant plague was a very real, and very prevalent, part of Shakespeare's daily life. But what were the concerns about plague that Shakespeare was considering when he wrote these works that refer to the disease?...

We are celebrating Shakespeare's birthday this week by taking a look at how Shakespeare became a gentleman. One of the ways William Shakespeare achieved the status of a gentleman was in the procurement of the family Coat of Arms. This process was something of a mystery because history shows us that Shakespeare's father had been eligible for a coat of arms, but never received it. Later, his son Wil...

Several of Shakespeare's history plays, and even some of his comedies mention or refer to characters as a knight. Sometimes knights are good, other times they are bad, and sometimes we aren't quite sure what they are as is often the case with characters like Falstaff. However, what's true is that an armored knight defending the honor of the monarchy were real people in Shakespeare's lifetime, and...

For William Shakespeare, the Globe theater itself represented a place that brought together a mix of classes. People from high society, all the way down the poorest of the poor observed Shakespeare's plays, but how much of the bard's work acknowledged the poor and what was the reality of charitable giving going on around William Shakespeare as he was penning some of his famous scenes about beggars...

When William Shakespeare was writing The Tempest was he considering the light bouncing off the walls of his playhouse? When he directed Feste to be fond of singing in Twelfth Night , did Shakespeare know the people in the back would be able to hear him? We don't often think about Shakespeare's plays in context of where they were originally performed, but this week our guest Sarah Dustagheer has wr...

Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford Upon Avon sits just outside the famous Cotswolds Hills, where wool was the primary industry. It's even thought that shepherds in the area taking care of their sheep are responsible for the first discovery of graphite that would go on to be used in pencils. In Shakespeare's plays, there are references to sheep, lambs, fleeces, wool, and shepherds in almost all of...

Good artists copy, great artists steal. That's the line they tell us about what it takes to be great at art, but was it true for William Shakespeare? The bard borrows heavily from sources like Holinshed, Ovid, and others in the writing of his plays but does it impact how we understand the story? This week we welcome our guest, JM Pressley of the Shakespeare Resource Center to walk us through the h...

Many times when Shakespeare would perform a play, there would be a bawdy and comical song and dance show performed after the play, even if the play was a tragedy or something more serious. A traditional part of Elizabethan theater, the jig was a not only an expected part of playhouse performances but they represent a slice of culture from Shakespeare's liftime. Many of the song and dance routines...

John Fletcher was a prominent playwright during William Shakespeare's lifetime, whose work came close to eclipsing that of the bard during the height of his popularity in early modern England. Friends, as well as colleagues with The King's Men, Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated on several key plays of Shakespeare like Henry VIII as well as Two Noble Kinsmen. John Fletcher was so prominent and...

While many of the castles and great homes of the monarch in England already contained luxurious bathrooms, it would be Henry VIII--in a style true to his flamboyant reputation, that would create elaborately accessorized bathrooms for palaces like Whitehall and Hampton Court. While these bathrooms were used by the monarchy in Shakespeare's life, such as Queen Elizabeth, the average Tudor, and Shake...

If the saying is true that you are the sum of your five closest friends, then one great way to get to know William Shakespeare is to take a look at the lives of his closest friends. John Heminges and Henry Condell helped form the foundation of the shareholder agreement Shakespeare made at The Globe and the Lord Chamberlain's Men. They would remain loyal to Shakespeare from Elizabethan England into...

William Shakespeare started out the son of a glove maker in a small town in England, and went on to become the greatest playwright the world has ever seen. How does one person accomplish so much? What did it take, exactly, for Shakespeare to become a genius? Was he born with particular gifts and talents no one else has seen or heard of again in the last 400 years? Or has our love of Shakespeare in...

Even Shakespeare had to eat. We laud Shakespeare as a man who helped reinvent the theater industry, and someone who would pen some of the greatest lines in all of antiquity, and establish a reputation that lasted at the top of his game for over 400 years. But what did someone like that eat for breakfast? It certainly wasn't Wheaties powering that legacy, so what kind of foods did Shakespeare enjoy...

Elizabeth I issued several proclamations during her reign concerning property, renting, and housing in England. London proper would see it's population more than double over the course of Shakespeare's lifetime, and there was very little in the way of any government concerning who could rent the limited available space owned in the city, what they could charge, or even basic safety regulations. Hi...

From Merry Wives of Windsor, to Measure for Measure, Alls Well That Ends Well, and others, the role of marriage plays a big role in Shakespeare's plays, determines the action, defining the characters, and living on several assumptions about the marriage institution. But what are those assumptions, exactly? As a modern audience member, what do we need to know about marriage in Shakespeare's lifetim...

When we talk about Shakespeare's theaters, most often we mean The Globe, with it's iconic "O' shape, we sometimes forget that Shakespeare's plays were actually performed in a variety of venues, and that William was involved in starting the first indoor theater anywhere in the world when he, and his longtime business partner Richard Burbage, established the then-risky venue, The Blackfriars. With t...

In Shakespeare's play, The Winter's Tale, there is a famous stage direction where the character Antigonus exits the stage but the written directions in the play state that he is to "exit, pursued by a bear." So in performance, this character exits as a bear, seemingly from nowhere, arrives to chase him off the stage and into Shakespeare legend. Here to help us look at the history and context of th...

When it comes to Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night-- other than the title and the use of role reversal, there's seemingly very little to suggest Shakespeare's play is anything but another comedy. In fact, modern stagings have often found it difficult to revive the play as a holiday feature due precisely to its' lack of holiday content. However, when we explore the history of the holiday itself, and...

With the holidays upon us, this Christmas Eve we wanted to celebrate with our favorite Elizabethan: William Shakespeare. Christmas was a popular celebration even 400 years ago and from the time young William was born growing up in Stratford Upon Avon, England, there were several important traditions that he used to mark the holiday with his family and friends. Here to help us explore the Christmas...

William Shakespeare is almost synonymous with iambic pentameter, his famous plays making this popular rhyme scheme famous as well. From Chaucer to King James I and Edmund Spenser, iambic pentameter flowed through English classical verse and the stages of The Globe and Blackfriars, prolifically dominating the spoken word in performances all over England. Iambic Pentameter was a major player in thea...

Mentioned by name in three of Shakespeare's plays, the legend of Robin Hood played a big role in the life of most dramatists in early modern England, being a prominent figure in English folklore, his legend was a popular source of good dramatic material on stage. For William Shakespeare, Robin Hood had some very specific touch points, not only was he mentioned by names, but numerous volumes of Sha...

Not many of us think of Shakespeare's plays as examples of great musicals, but from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to even Macbeth , Shakespeare uses music, song, and instrumental accompaniment as a dramatic device that spurs forward the story of the play, and quite often, even comments on the actions of the players themselves with songs, dances, and even musical flourishes to introduce or follow the...

If we took a photograph of every single King Lear ever staged, they would likely all be wearing a different costume. When it comes to Shakespeare's stage directions, he's of very little help to production companies because rarely, if at all, are the costumes of a particular play detailed out anywhere by Shakespeare himself. Of course his characters wore costumes, and used props, but exactly what w...

One of the most iconic holiday images in the Western World is that of a grand family table set for a crowd, packed with goodies and right at the center is a stuffed turkey glistening and ready for dinner. What you might not expect from this image is that the turkey's arrival on the holiday table has a long history in transatlantic exploration and international trade with Native Americans which dat...