That Shakespeare Life

January 6 is the day that many celebrate a holiday called Epiphany, the first manifestation of Jesus as the Son of God to the Gentiles, which happened through the visit of the Magi, or the Three Kings, who visited Jesus and brought him the now famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrr. The holiday was celebrated in Shakespeare's lifetime, but just like today when the holiday is marked by cultur...

When the weather was cold in England, it could get frigidly cold, even causing the rivers and lakes to freeze over. In Elizabethan England, you may be surprised to learn that ice sports, such as skating, even hockey, were practiced on the ice in wintertime. To share with us the history of these sports, the archaeological record that survives to demonstrate that history, as well as what we know abo...

A drink, as much as it was songs and a group activity, wassail has been a traditional part of the Christmas season in England, and particularly a favorite of Twelfth Night celebrations, for centuries, including before and during the life of William Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth talks about wine and wassail going together to muddle up the brain, Falstaff mentions a wassail can...

Shakespeare's plays mention horses over 300 times across his works, reflecting the huge place in the every day lives of people that this animal occupied. For something that was so essential for travel and for work, it makes sense that a horse owner would want to make sure their horse received the best of care. The art of horse doctoring in the 16th century generally fell under the purview of the b...

Mead has been made since ancient times and is the poster drink for historical gatherings, often being carried around in a large mug. You may know that this beverage is alcoholic, but you may be surprised to learn how it is different from other alcoholic drinks, particularly in the 16th century. If you look up mead today, it's known as a honey wine and can be mixed with a variety of herbs and spice...

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the nurse complains of a headache saying "Lord, how my head aches! what a head have I! It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces." In 1582, Bartholomew the Englishman's 13th century text was reprinted in London, describing a condition called "emigraina" that Bartholomew defined as "similar to hammers beating in the head." Whether it was called emigraina, head ac...

Samoset is a name spoken with respect around American dinner tables every November as we celebrate Thanksgiving, when Samoset is remembered with gratitude, for being willing to bridge the language gap for the English colonists who had just arrived at Plymouth. While Samoset's visit to the colonists happened 5 years after Shakespeare's death, the rest of Samoset's life is actually contemporary with...

Shakespeare has all kinds of references to doors in his works, at least 195 instances of the actual word "door" in fact, and for many of us, we probably gloss over the word 'Door" thinking we understand what he's talking about. However, architectural history tells us that doors were actually quite different for Shakespeare's lifetime than what we have today from how they were made, to how they wer...

All 4 of Shakespeare's references to the word "gamut" show up in his play Taming of the Shrew where the characters talk about learning, and teaching, the "gamut." If you've ever heard the expression "run the gamut" or "cover the gamut" these expressions are based on an 11th century understanding of the word "gamut" developed by the musician and monk named Guido d'Arezzo, who used the term to descr...

Tomorrow night, November 5, is when many in England will celebrate an occasion known as Bonfire Night. They celebrate this day to mark the moment King James I was saved from the Gunpowder Plot (along with many in his government) when Guy Fawkes was thwarted in his attempt to blow up England's Parliament using gunpowder hidden beneath the building during an official government meeting. The event wa...

Shakespeare made the three witch sisters famous in his play, Macbeth, by showcasing their manupulative power, encantations, and their famous pot of double double toil and trouble. While this version of witches makes for a fun spoof at Halloween parties today, when Shakespeare was originally bringing these sisters to life on stage, witches were not only considered real beings, but were thought to b...

Revenge Tragedy is a genre of plays, applied posthumously to Shakespeare's works. Just like modern day film and tv has genres like romance, western, or comedy, plays of Shakespeare's lifetime had these categories, too, and today we're going to explore a particular subcategory of tragedy known as Revenge Tragedies. While the genre itself didn't exist in Shakespeare's lifetime, the plays and what th...

In 1552, a lexicographer gave us the word "noctivagation" which means walking around at night. The word itself was a legal term for Shakespeare's lifetime, used to describe someone that wandered around at night without any particular purpose. Vagrancy, on the whole, was frowned upon for Shakespeare's lifetime, but vagrancy at night was viewed with extreme suspicion. In fact, walking around at nigh...

When Shakespeare was writing plays in the 16th to early 17th century, he was participating in an industry that was both established, as well as rapidly evolving. Shakespeare himself ushered in innovation for the theater industry, while the bard, along with his contemporaries, equally embraced long held traditions that included shamelessly copying one another's work. Acknowledging that copying some...

In Henry IV Part 1, Vernon refers to the clothing of young Harry saying "I saw young Harry, with his beaver on…" There are at least 6 other references to the large, semi-aquatic rodent known as the beaver to be found in Shakespeare's plays, and while many of Shakespeare's references are talking about the helmet feature that opens and closes on the front of soldier's face, the references are a refl...

During Shakespeare's lifetime England, along with other European nations, began intentional exploration to the New World, where they not only established colonies but established commerce relationships with the native tribes they found there. Exchanges in what the Dutch West India Company called 'New Netherland' included trades of beaver pelts and shell beads with tribes like the Algonquian Indian...

After the image of William Shakespeare himself, perhaps the most famous objects associated with William Shakespeare has to be the quill pen, but was this pen actually made of goose feathers, and if so, how was it made? Of course the quill pen is far from the only use for geese in the 16-17th century, as reflected in Shakespeare's plays where the bard mentions geese well over a dozen times, talking...

The Clown in Alls Well That Ends Well talks about picking his teeth, and Coriolanus gives an admonishment about hygiene when he says "Bid them wash their faces And keep their teeth clean." John Holland in Henry VI Part 2 talks about having teeth pulled, and in the Winter's Tale the clown talks about being able to identify a nobleman by how he picks his teeth. Of the more than 50 references to teet...

You may be surprised to learn that marriage in the 16th century was not required, nor a foregone conclusion, for all women of this time period. In addition to spinsters, who were older women that had never been married, there were widows that lost their husband, women who were divorced or separated from their husbands, and still some women who our guest this week calls "never married" women. A "ne...

To live in England during Shakespeare's lifetime was to be Protestant, or at least as far as the Queen was concerned. The lack of religious freedom in early modern England doesn't mean alternate belief systems did not exist, only that they were hidden. One powerful belief system that riled up conservative members of society and incited objection pamphlets to be written is atheism. Here today to di...

Deaths were a common occurrence on stage for Shakespeare's characters, but the wild and often macabre deaths we see in his plays were not actually far off from the deaths that occurred in real life for the 16-17th century. From poisonings to beheadings, one person who knew a lot about how people died in Shakespeare's lifetime was the coroner who job it was to catalog deaths and keep track of any t...

It is a frequent misconception that people from Shakespeare's lifetime believed the world was flat. In fact, the publication of the world on a spherical globe was not only well established across Europe by Shakespeare's lifetime, but there are numerous portraits from the 16-17th century showing individuals owning and displaying spherical globes. The first English person to create a spherical globe...

Even William Shakespeare had to take out the garbage. In his hometown of Stratford Upon Avon, public waste was managed through a system of piles known as muck hills. In 1552, William Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, was charged a fine for one of these muck hills that was kept across the street from his home on Henley Street. For a long time, scholars have thought this fine meant that John S...

In the late 16th to early 17th century, a medical movement saw a meteoric rise in popularity known as Paracelsianism. Based on the writings of a physician who had died in 1541, the movement developed quite a cult following, with many claiming Paracelsus was able to work miracles of healing. Debate over the legitimacy of Paracelsus' work became so heated that some Europeans were executed just for o...

William Shakespeare's mother, Mary, was Mary Arden before she married her husband, John Shakespeare. Mary's possible connection to the gentry Arden family has fascinated scholars and Shakespeare fans for many years. The Arden family was an established English gentry family in Warwickshire, and 1 of a handful of Tudor families in England who could trace their lineage back to the Anglo-Saxons. The f...