That Shakespeare Life

In Shakespeare's in Henry IV, Part 2, Falstaff has the line: "his wit's as thick as Tewkesbury Mustard" (Act 2, Scene 4). Falstaff is describing his friend Ned Poins, but it presents the question of what was Tewkesbury Mustard? Turns out this particular mustard developed in a small town of England called Tewkesbury, and it was not only popular in Shakespeare's lifetime, but during the 17th century...

In Shakespeare's play, Measure for Measure , there's a fictional court case against Claudio for extra-marital misconduct. The play separately asks the audience to pass judgement on Angelo regarding a marriage pre-contract that was known as a "Spousal" contract for Shakespeare's lifetime. In 1604, when Measure for Measure was first performed, these cases of immoral behavior were being tried in real...

In his 1611 English to French dictionary, Randle Cotgrave defines the exclamation point as "the point of admiration and detestation" While credit for the original creation of the exclamation point is given to Alpoleio da Urbisaglia, the current version of the exclamation point that we know today developed between 1400-1600, during the time WIlliam Shakespeare was penning over 6000 uses of exclamat...

When it comes to stepping back into the life of William Shakespeare and walking around the streets of London to see what the sights, sounds, smells, people and places were really like, no one does that better than a time traveler. In order to take just such a trip and take a short jaunt down a London street during the 16th century, we are delighted to welcome a man who is a listener favorite and l...

One of Shakespeare's strongest characters is Queen Margaret who, as a consequence of her husband's bouts with insanity, finds it necessary to lead not only a country, but to stand at the helm of an entire army, leading England's military into battle and winning. It is an important story in the history of the War of the Roses, and one that Jared Kirby and Hudson Classical Theater decided to take on...

In the 16th century, one man from Norwich, Thomas Sotherton, wanted to encourage these refugees to settle in Norfolk, specifically, because the immigrant's skills in textile weaving made them valuable to the economy. To that end, he setup what became known as Stranger's Hall, where the immigrants could live and work. The property was owned by people who would have used the property for business an...

In 1584, Spain dominated the coasts of Central and South America, the Carribean, and modern day Florida. England, under the rule of Elizabeth I, sought to disrupt and overthrow this control by establishing colonies in the New World. Not only would these colonies help provide a buffer against Spain's control, but it also helped set up a home base for England's privateering, which allowed English sh...

During his lifetime, only about half of Shakespeare's plays were available in printed versions. That meant that there were several of Shakespeare's plays that weren't available in printed form at all while the bard was alive. So how do we know about those plays today if there weren't any written records? They survive through a book called the First Folio. There are at least 18 plays from Shakespea...

Today we're talking about undergarments! 16th –17th century fashion was rife with gorgeous and elaborate outerwear, but the underwear, hose, and supportive under clothing was just as intricate. Shakespeare's plays from this period suggest that clothing styles were a way to identify a man's nationality. In Much Ado About Nothing Don Pedro talks about being able to identify the Dutch, French, German...

In his plays, Richard III, in his Henry Plays, and even in macbeth, Shakespeare writes about medical disabilities and phsyical deformities like a hunchback, madness, blindness, and being lame. We can tell form these references that disability was present in Shakespare's lietime but what exactly was the understanding of what a disability meant for a real person in Shakespeare's lifetime? In order t...

Shakespeare mentions "covenants drawn between's" in Cymbeline, and mentions covenants again in Henry VI when the King is negotiating a marriage to Lady Margaret, and then it concept comes up further in both Richard II and and in Taming of the Shrew. Covenants were a key player in the Protestant Reformation that was going on in Shakespeare's lifetime, but it was also a word that could meant to prom...

In this week's episode you'll hear me learn about how to pronounce this week's topic correctly—it is the Huguenots (and not Huguenots as I had been saying and which you may have been tempted to say as well). This week we're exploring the arrival of Huguenots to England in Shakespeare's lifetime. During Catherine de Medici's reign as Queen consort in France, the country was anything but hospitable...

Ulisse Aldrovandi is considered by many scientists, including Carl Linnaeus, the man who formalized the modern system of naming animals, to be the father of natural history studies. During Shakespeare's lifetime, until his death in 1605, Aldrovandi collected a vast amount of specimens for his cabinet of curiosities, gathering over 7000 artifacts, organizing multiple expeditions to collect plants,...

The fruit today known as a tomato was first introduced to Europe during Shakespeare's lifetime. As many new things were, this fruit was received at first with skepticism, considered a kind of curiosity. It was called a golden apple, as well as a "pomi d'oro" in Italy, where many considered the fruit dangerous, poisonous, and something that was pleasing to the eye, but secretly treacherous. Shakesp...

During the 16th century in Europe, the Portuguese dominated the African slave trade. European ships were first exposed to African slaves when privateering vessels would find enslaved  Africans packed alongside Atlantic trade goods in the hulls of the captured ships. The Spanish were the first to try and break up the Portuguese monopoly on slaves, establishing a system known as the asiento de negro...

Prior to Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in 1538, the section of London known as Blackfriars was as major religious institution extending along the bank of the Thames River. In its' entirety, Blackfriars was second in size only to St. Paul's Churchyard. After the Reformation, Blackfriars was located in what's known as a Liberty, which meant it was just outside the reach of the mayoral...

It's Shakespeare's Birthday this week! Happy Birthday Shakespeare! To celebrate, we're going to paly some card games! From Noddy and Maw to Laugh and Lie Down, card games were popular for Shakespeare's lifetime, with records from the court of King James and Elizabeth I outlining games played, losses incurred, and even insults traded between dignitaries all over the playing of card games. Shakespea...

Whether it's a diary entry or a side note in a ledger or account book, history leaves us records of plays that were performed during Shakespeare's lifetime, but their scripts never survived to the present day in any form that's recognizable as a complete play. Other than the occasional snippet of a line or two here and there, we cannot read these plays, and we certainly can't perform them, but we...

The difference in Shakespeare's plays between a tragedy and a comedy is defined as whether or not the characters end in marriage or end in death. The comedies often showcase the promise of a marriage, or even sometimes multiple marriages, with proposals happening in the midst of fun and elaborate parties including songs, dances, and frivolity. Then of course those happy marriages are starkly contr...

Of all the history we know about William Shakespeare and what it was like to live in turn of the 17th century England, one of the hardest things to know for sure about the bard is what he looked like. There are only two verified portraits of William Shakespeare, one is the bust available at his funerary monument in Stratford Upon Avon, and the other is known as the Droeshout portrait, which is an...

In 1594 and 1595, when William Shakespeare was 31 years old, fires tore through his hometown of Stratford Upon Avon, causing such destruction that this natural disaster is one of the few major events in Stratford Upon Avon that was recorded for posterity. The fires were known as The Great Fires and in the aftermath of the devastation the town gathered together to rebuild the timbers of their homes...

In the late 16th century, William Shakespeare was in his 30s, and staging plays like As You Like It, where Rosalind mentions the "howling of Irish wolves against the moon." (That's from Act V scene ii). While scholars today debate whether or not that's a reference to the legend of werewolves, we know from a painting completed in 1595 that there was at least one family whose hereditary disease made...

The Lord Chamberlain's Men is known as "Shakespeare's playing company" and was a group of actors for which Shakespeare wrote plays most of his career. By 1603, The Lord Chamberlain's Men were so popular that James I himself chose to patronize the company making it The King's Men. Today we are going to look at the man who made the company The Lord Chamberlain's Men, and that's Henry Carey, the Firs...

In her latest book, Mortal Monarchs: 1000 Years of Royal Deaths Suzie Edge writes about the deaths of several of England's monarchs who died in grotesque, weird, or elaborate ways. A former medical doctor now turned history, Suzie takes an indepth look at the sciene behind the deaths of Kings and Queens of England across a thousand years of history. Today, Suzie joins us on the show today to share...

In 1567, a young English sailor named David Ingram signed up to work on a ship captained by English privateer John Hawkins. They would travel up and down the coasts of Africa and Mexico raiding and trading goods. In November of 1567, Ingram found himself and close to a hundred of his fellow crewmates stranded off the coast of Mexico, in a city called Tampico, just south of the present day Texas/Me...