That Shakespeare Life

Plague is the horrible sickness that reoccurs throughout the life of William Shakespeare, and many listeners will know that plague is to blame for several closings of playhouses around London throughout the 16-17th century. However, what does that word mean, precisely? What symptoms did people have when afflicted with plague, and how was it transmitted from person to person? The play Romeo and Jul...

Mary Queen of Scots and her son, James VI of Scotland, brought an urgency to England for sharing news about what was happening in Scotland. From 1580 onwards, the same years Shakespeare was writing about Scotland in plays like Henry VI Part 1 and later Macbeth, which features Scotland prominently, the rate of news about events in Scotland being published in England skyrocketed. This increase can b...

"Pregnant" is a word Shakespeare uses in his plays, but it always appears in connection with ideas, grief, or even trauma, but never as a word to describe a woman that is carrying an unborn baby. Instead, whenever a woman is carrying a child in her uterus in Shakespeare's works, the phrase used is "with child." This divergence between Shakespeare's language and how we are accustomed to using the w...

William Shakespeare was just two years old when Mary Queen of Scots was removed from power in 1567. The Queen was put under confinement in Lochleven Castle and forced to abdicate the throne in favor of her young son, James VI, the future James I of England. Mary and her supporters, however, did not go quietly. Mary would escape from prison one year later and incite her followers to confront their...

For Shakespeare's lifetime, the concept of welcoming hospitality was considered a uniquely English virtue. We see this opinion reflected in the play, As You Like It , when Shakespeare's character Corin suggests that doing deeds of hospitality was one way to get to heaven. Nowhere was hospitality reflected more clearly, or extended more often, than at the country house estate. Now before you think...

Merry Christmas! I am thrilled you are spending a piece of your Christmas holiday here with us today. That's a lovely gift in and of itself to have you on the other side of the speakers today as we explore the Christmas tradition of gift giving in 17th century England, and exactly what Shakespeare would have received as a Christmas gift in December over 400 years ago. We are also going to explore...

This Christmas season we are celebrating the holidays Shakespeare style by bringing out some traditional Tudor ghosts tories. For the 16-17th century, one popular time to tell ghost stories was during the Christmas holidays. A more accurate term for these stories might be "ghost narratives" because they are different than the stories we think of today as "ghost stories"Instead of being fictional t...

In Tudor England, it was a tradition to tell ghost stories to celebrate Christmas, particularly on Christmas Eve. One of the people about whom ghost stories might have been shared is none other than Anne Boleyn. If the legends are true, Anne Boleyn's ghost must be the most traveled ghost in Britain, with stories of her spirit wandering across the country in at least 7 different locations. These st...

During the reign of Elizabeth I, which was 1558-1603 and spans most of Shakespeare's lifetime, England was experiencing the English Renaissance, a time when all forms of art were seeing a shift in popularity, but music, in particular moved from being something you would hear only in a church to being popular at more secular events. In fact, not only did Elizabeth I herself enjoy playing music, but...

William Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, spent a great deal of time in trouble with the government over his illegal sale of wool. Several court documents show that John Shakespeare was investing in wool then selling it on to others. He didn't have a license to sell the wool, which is why he was so regularly in trouble. What the records of his dealings demonstrate is that the wool was valuab...

The Pilgrim Psalter (originally titled "The Book of Psalms, Englished in Prose and Meter") was produced by Henry Ainsworth in 1612. Ainsworth was a Hebrew scholar and Bible teacher among the English Separatists in Amsterdam, Holland. The work is called a Psalter because it is a translation of the Hebrew Psalms which between 1010 and 930 BC during the time of David and his son Solomon. Ainsworth's...

When we sit down to a formal dinner here in the United States, there are manners you are expected to follow like sit up straight, push your chair in, place your napkin in your lap. All of this small niceties are called collectively dining etiquette and they represent the rules for how we are to operate socially when eating a meal. Which begs the question: What about Shakespeare? When the bard sat...

Shakespeare's plays refer to a napkin at least 20 times, including As You Like It where Rosalind mentions a bloody napkin, in Hamlet the title character is offered a napkin to "rub thy brows." In Henry IV Part 1, Falstaff talks about someone's shirt being made of "two napkins" sewn together, Merry Wives of Windsor scorns the greasy napkin, while Othello complains that Desdemona's napkin is too sma...

Far before the time of Shakespeare, there was a prevalent belief in the creatures known as werewolves, or lycanthrope, as they were called in the Ancient world. This belief saw a large increase by the 16th century, with people believing werewolves were humans capable of shape shifting into the form of a large and evil wolf, desiring to consume other humans, particularly children, by the light of a...

William Shakespeare refers to the legend of Robin Hood in his play,  As You Like it  with the old Duke exiled to the Forest of Arden with a group of Merry Men who "live like the old Robin Hood of England" (Act I, scene i). In his play,  The Two Gentlemen of Verona , Shakespeare again mentions the Robin Hood legend when an outlaw exclaims "By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar." The accompany...

In the year 1623, close to a decade after William Shakespeare died, the First Folio was published, which is a collection of some of Shakespeare's plays selected by his friends and a group of business investors involved in the project. What makes it a Folio, as opposed to simply a book, is the way in which it is physically bound. Here today to help us explore the materials used in making the Folio,...

ForShakespeare's lifetime, ghosts and spiritual manifestations were fixture in pop culture publications like songs, ballads, and of course, plays like Shakespeare's that feature ghosts such as Banquo, Hamlet's Father, and even a string of dead victims that visit Richard III on the eve of Battle in Shakespeare's Richard III. They were as haunting as ever in Shakespeare's lifetime, but what was the...

During his voyage around the world in 1577-1580, Sir Francis Drake captained a ship named the Golden Hinde. On this ship lived a woman named Maria, whose plight we only know about because of a record kept by an anonymous sailor who mentions her in one line of a manuscript currently housed at the British Museum in London. The line is short, but the history it references is immense. The line reads "...

Shakespeare uses the word "apple" in his works a total of 9 times, including references to crab apples, rotten apples, and the apple of your eye, among others. The word apple was used to describe the round, edible, fruit we know today, but could also apply to other fruits. In fact, some 16-17th century references use "apple" as a generic term for any fruit that included a nut. There's even one exp...

In Shakespeare's lifetime, the game we call soccer today, known as football in Europe, was a popular in Shakespeare's lifetime. In fact, some sources say the game of football was invented in England during the Middle Ages. These original forms of football were called "mob football" and would be played in towns and villages, involving two opposing teams, that would struggle by any means possible to...

In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Act III, Sir Toby Belch uses the Great Bed of Ware in England as a measuring stick for something that is impossibly large. The Great Bed of Ware is a real bed, as it was in Shakespeare's lifetime, that was made for travelers to use when staying at an inn. The bed itself is, as Sir Toby suggests, impossibly large, with sleeping capacity for up to 9 people! Here today...

When we look back at the study of Shakespeare's plays, the question always come to mind about how much can we know about the actual William Shakespeare from the pieces of artwork, plays, and even legal documents that survive about his life. No one has done more study of the plays of William Shakespeare nor understands more about his life in turn of the 17th century England than our guest today, St...

A short notice for you ahead of today's episode, I apologize for the general gruff sounding voice today, I am recovering from a cold and struggling through a horrible cough that threatens to take my voice completely. But never fear! As a true performance professional, the show must go on! Therefore, I am armed with three cups of chamomile tea, a large bottle of water, and an excellent audio editor...

In the play, Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff declares "Let the sky rain potatoes!" what's unique about this quote, despite Falstaff calling for root vegetables to rain down from the sky which is of course, weird on its' own, but potatoes on the whole were brand new to England at the exact time Shakespeare was including this quote in his play. Merry Wives of Windsor was written towards the end of...

After we published our episode here on That Shakespeare Life about the Duncan portrait of William Shakespeare, I received an email from Steve Wadlow, telling me about the history of a portrait that had been hanging in his family home for years that a visiting Shakespeare scholar indicated might be William Shakespeare, and suggested Steve look into the provenance further. With no prior experience i...