That Shakespeare Life

When Falstaff cries, "Let the sky rain potatoes" in The Merry Wives of Windsor , Shakespeare's audience heard more than a vegetable—they heard novelty, superstition, and even scandal. In Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the potato was still a strange newcomer from the Americas, rumored to be an aphrodisiac, a medicine, and an oddity of the garden. This week, historian and food scholar Rebecca Ear...

For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the line between history and myth was often delightfully blurred. Legends of King Arthur and the fabled Holy Grail captured the imaginations of 16th-century England, weaving their way into royal propaganda, courtly entertainments, and even the education of young scholars. Elizabeth I herself was likened to the Grail Maiden, and stories of sacred relics mingl...

This week, we explore the legacy of Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway, through the only epitaph in the Shakespeare family plot that's written in Latin and engraved on brass. Our guest, Katherine Scheil, walks us through the historical significance of Anne's burial placement, the meaning behind the poetic language of her epitaph, and what these choices tell us about Anne's relationship with her dau...

Shakespeare's plays are rich with references to fashion and feathers. In All's Well That Ends Well, he writes: "Faith, there's a dozen of 'em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man."    These plumed hats weren't just theatrical flourishes—they were part of a broader story of global trade, Indigenous artistic labor, and the ways in which early...

"I think this be the most villanous house in all London road for fleas..." - Henry IV Part I (II.1) So complains one of Shakespeare's characters in The Merry Wives of Windsor , voicing what was surely a common frustration in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fleas were an ever-present part of daily life—so much so that they appeared in poems, jokes, love songs, and even seven different times across Sha...

In Love's Labour's Lost , Berowne declares, "Let us dance and sport," while in Twelfth Night , Sir Toby Belch exclaims, "Shall we set about some revels?" Shakespeare's plays are filled with movement—more than 100 stage directions across his works call for a dance, making dance not merely entertainment, but a powerful form of expression in the early modern world.    This week on That Shakespeare Li...

When you picture a Shakespeare play, you likely imagine a continuous performance—scene following scene, act following act—until the final bow. But in Shakespeare's lifetime, especially at indoor theatres like the Blackfriars, plays weren't always presented without pause. Candlelight, used to illuminate the stage, had to be trimmed, replaced, or even relit during performances, which meant intention...

In King Lear , Shakespeare has the king cry out, "Break, heart; I prithee, break!"—a line rich with sorrow, and one that may have held deeper meaning for Shakespeare's audience than we often assume. Modern medicine identifies Takotsubo Syndrome—also known as "broken heart syndrome"—as a temporary dysfunction of the heart triggered by emotional distress. Incredibly, this concept may have had early...

A letter fragment recently rediscovered in an archive may contain the earliest surviving reference to Shakespeare's name—and a clue to where he lived in 1596. This week, Matthew Steggle joins us to explore the evidence behind the Trinity Lane location and its connection to Shakespeare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"He that eats my capon, shall know me better."   — All's Well That Ends Well (Act II, Scene 2)  Roasted to perfection and served at noble feasts, the capon—a castrated rooster prized for its tenderness and rich flavor—was one of the most luxurious poultry options available in Shakespeare's England. While today the word may be unfamiliar to many, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the capon was a deli...

When we think of Shakespeare collaborating with another writer, the name John Fletcher quickly comes to mind. Together they penned Two Noble Kinsmen , All is True (also known as Henry VIII ), and the now-lost play Cardenio . But what do we actually know about the working relationship between these two men? Did they sit down side-by-side at a table to write, or pass drafts back and forth in letters...

In the year 1603, just as Shakespeare was writing Othello and the reign of Elizabeth I was transitioning to James I, Galileo Galilei—famous for exploring the heavens—was also measuring the invisible. Among his lesser-known inventions was a device called the thermoscope, an elegant glass instrument that could detect changes in temperature—centuries before the modern thermometer. Today, we call it t...

"Bait the hook well; this fish will bite." So says Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing , and he's not alone—Shakespeare drops over 70 references to fish and fishing across his plays, from slippery metaphors to full-on fishing scenes, including actual Fishermen characters in Pericles . But behind those lines lies a very real part of daily life in Elizabethan England.  In a world where Protestant ref...

While Shakespeare's plays are filled with references to ale and sack, wine played a central role in both the economy and social customs of Renaissance England. In this episode, we uncork the history of winemaking in Shakespeare's lifetime—what kinds of grapes were grown, how wine was stored and served, and why a cold snap in the 1500s forever changed England's vineyards. Our guest, winemaker and h...

"Romeo and Juliet" may be Shakespeare's most famous love story—but it wasn't entirely his own. Long before the Bard set quill to page, a tale of star-crossed lovers was already circulating in Europe. In this episode, we're joined by filmmaker Timothy Scott Bogart, director of the new musical film Juliet & Romeo , which reimagines the lovers' story in its earlier, 13th-century context. Together, we...

Shakespeare wrote his play Hamlet in the early 1600s and by the late 1600s, well after the death of William Shakespeare in 1616, playing troupes are taking plays including Shakespeare's Hamlet and other works by early modern playwrights, and turning them into performance adaptations using a new medium---specifically, they're using puppets. Puppetry, marionettes, and glove puppets perform miniature...

Shakespeare uses the word "castle" over 40 times in his works. He talks about sieging a castle, the power of castle walls, and even mentions specific real life castles by name including Berkley Castle and "Pomfret" castle which is another name for Pontefract Castle, along with at least a dozen more. These castles were prominent features in the landscape of Shakespeare's lifetime, playing roles bot...

In Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff says "the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass!" Burning glasses were a specific kind of lens, that allowed you to harness the sun's rays to create fire. They were a predesessor on the road to later lens construction that allowed for the convex shape which allows someone to create prescription glasses. In Shakespeare's lifetime, a sp...

Orlando, from the play As You Like It , talks about church bells knolling, and later in that same play, the Duke talks about how we "have with holy bell been knoll'd to church." There's a conversation in Act II of Pericles where two fishermen discuss a parish getting swallowed by a whale, and they refer to the parish as "The whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all." These references demonstr...

Elizabeth I is perhaps the most famous Queen of England, reigning from November 1558 until her death in 1603. When you study her life, you quickly learn that she was known as "the Virgin Queen" for her staunch stance against marriage. Despite directives from her court and intense peer pressure from those around her, Elizabeth faced down scandal, rumors, and suspicion throughout her reign, only to...

Since 1939, when Francios E. Matthas wrote it into scientific literature, the Little Ice Age has been known as a period in history between the 15th and 19th centuries, when the climate was significantly colder than what is typical. The history generally divides the Little Ice Age into sections, which alternate with periods of warming to create wild weather phenomena, including long frozen winters...

"Get me the ink and paper." Cleopatra demands in Antony and Cleopatra (I.5) In Henry IV Part I, Peto says "Nothing but papers, my lord." (II.4) These are just two of over 100 references to paper in Shakespeare's plays, with characters reading papers, carrying papers, delivering them, and of course, writing on papers. Naturally, the technology of paper itself isn't that remarkable, being centuries...

In Shakespeare's play, Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra declares "It is my birth-day:  I had thought to have held it poor: but, since my lord Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." Indicating that she was relieved to be marking the occasion in a better way. Julius Ceasar, similarly declares in Act V, "This is my birth-day; as this very day was Cassius born." In Pericles, the First Fisherman says "h...

This week, we have a special opportunity here on the show to explore the Historic home of Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna Shakespeare Hall, that has been brought to life in a beautiful digital 3Dformat thanks to a pioneering new digital archive that has created an augmented reality exhibition that lets visitors like you and me, visit and virtually walk through Susanna's home known as Hall's...

In Shakespeare's plays, he talks about "Travel" or "Traveller" just under 80 times, including references that suggest people travelled by foot and by horse, the Queen Mab speech by Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet talks about a wagon used for transportation, and there are references that indicate there were items which would add comfort to someone's travel, and one reference from Comedy of Errors talk...