The History Of European Theatre

Episode 199:  The line I have used for the title of today’s episode is spoken by Feste the fool, a central character in ‘Twelfth Night’.  Fools have already played significant roles in Shakespeare’s previous plays and as you will hear there are possible connections between them and Feste, but significant as he is, and fools will be in forthcoming Shakespeare plays, there is so much...

Episode 198: As Ben Jonson was writing ‘The Poetaster’ in 1601 the Elizabethan age was drawing to a close.  Elizabeth would live until March 1603, but by 1601 any hope of a natural heir was long past and her court and councillors were playing a waiting game and with different degrees of secrecy were trying to manipulate the situation over the accession to their own advantage.  ...

Episode 197:  For today’s guest episode I had the pleasure of talking to Simon Sandys Winsch, author of the Illustrated Tudor Dictionary.  Given Simon’s broad knowledge of the period I took the opportunity to talk to him about some of the entries in the dictionary that give us a view of what life was like for the Elizabethan’s who went to the London theatres.  We started b...

Episode 196: The origins of the play written for the court and the Children of the Chaple playing company Why this type of play is a fit for the child playing troupes The print history of the play A brief synopsis of the play Myth, Satire and Masque - the complexities with getting an understanding of the play The minor role of plot compared to words and music in the play The performance style of t...

Episode 195  Last time I completed my review of ‘Hamlet’, although it is probably wrong to say that one’s thoughts on Hamlet are ever complete.  I am not alone in finding that every time I see the play, and it is I think, as it is for many, the Shakespeare play I have seen most often, I find something new in it to think on.  To complete this quartet of episodes on the play...

Episode 194:  Last time I left things hanging for Hamlet as, having seen the ghost of his father and resolved on revenge, he had seen his planning go awry as he mistakenly killed the old councillor Polonius while he hid behind a wall hanging.  We have seen his daughter Ophelia begin her descent into madness, school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become embroiled in Hamlet’s fe...

Episode 193 For today’s guest episode it is a very welcome return to the podcast for Colin David Reese, who I last spoke to in early 2023, when we discussed his play ‘Shakespeare Unbound: A Gift to the Future’ and Shakespeare in general.  If you missed those episodes you will find them as part of season five, first released in February and April 2023. On this occasion I asked Colin to di...

Episode 192: And so, we come to perhaps the biggest challenge in all of Shakespeare's work, ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark’.  Over the next two episodes and a special guest episode I hope I can get close to doing this monumental play justice. The dating of the play and the complication of the ‘ur-Hamlet’ The early print history of the play and the three versions The possible so...

Episode 191: For today’s guest episode it is a welcome return to Ricky Dukes, artistic director of Lazarus Theatre Company.  Following on from our conversation about ‘Henry V’ Ricky and I went on to discuss ‘Julius Caesar’.  Not surprisingly our conversation pulled out some alternative points to those I raised in my episode on the play, especially when it came to talking about...

Episode 190: 'Julius Caesar' has proved to be one of Shakespeare’s most malleable plays through the centuries as it’s political narrative has been applied to just about every period of history since it was first performed, either in the moment or retrospectively.  In most people’s estimation it is one of Shakespeare’s truly great plays, but that does not mean that there is always a conse...

Episode 189: For today’s guest episode it is my pleasure to welcome Dr Iman Sheeha to the podcast.  Her book ‘Neighbourly Relations in early modern drama has been published recently so it was a great opportunity to talk to her about her research after she had just completed a summer tour of conferences. Her work is a close examination of neighbourly relationships in early modern English...

Episode 188: Following on from the last episode before the run of summer guest conversations we take a sharp swerve from ‘Henry V’ to ‘As You Like It’.  Although we cannot be quite sure about the chronology in which Shakespeare wrote his plays, or how much the writing of one crossed over with the writing of another, whatever the precise order it is pretty clear that Shakespeare could mov...

Episode 187: This episode is both an ending and a beginning.  An ending because it is the last of the recent run of consecutive guest episodes – next time we will be returning to Shakespeare, Jonson and their plays – but it is also the first of what I hope will be a series of guest episodes attached to each of the very significant Shakespeare plays that are coming up soon. With the...

Episode 186: In this continuing series of guest episodes, it is a very welcome return to the podcast for Tim Fitzhigham.  You may remember I spoke to Tim in episode 140 about his work at the Kings Lynn Guildhall where the Elizabethan period Stage had recently been uncovered and hit the headlines in the UK as a stage that Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men had actually played on as they tour...

Episode 185: For today’s guest episode it’s a warm welcome to the podcast for Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth, co-authors of the recently published book ‘The Shakespeare Ladies Club’. Their book explores the lives of four ladies who were crucial in ensuring the original work of Shakespeare was not forgotten in the 18th Century and beyond. In 1736, these three ladies of quality, two from the...

Episode 184: Today’s episode is part of my summer run of guest episodes and feels very special as rather than talking about a long dead playwright I got to talk to a living one.  Sara Farrington is a New York based playwright who has written an adaptation of ‘The Trojan Women’ by Euripides, called ‘A Trojan Woman’, which has had several productions in Europe and Nort America and Sara kin...

Episode 183: Today’s episode is the first of a short run of guest episodes to see us through the end of the English summer and first up is Daniel Swift, author of ‘The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the making of William Shakespeare’.  Given that title I don’t think Daniel’s book needs any further introduction other than to say that I found it a fascinating read and I hope t...

Episode 182: Although it feels like a while since Shakespeare had produced a history play, we must remember that all the plays I have discussed so far were written and played in a very compressed timescale.  If we take Henry 6th part 1 as being from 1591 then eight years and eighteen plays later, we get to Henry 5th. The sources for the play The dating of the play The printing histo...

6.68 Leicester’s Men: A Conversation with Laurie Johnson Episode 181: For today’s guest episode it’s a pleasure to welcome Laurie Johnson to the podcast.  Laurie’s book ‘Leicester’s Men and their Plays’ is a fascination study of one of the most influential of the playing troupes of the Elizabethan period and the story of how they lived and functioned under one of the most influential nob...

Episode 180: Much Ado About Nothing remains one of the more popular comedies where the characters of Benedick and Beatrice are usually thought of as the leading characters, but this play is much more of an ensemble piece than might be usually remembered. The dating of the play The print history of the play Early performances of the play The sources for the play The significance of the title A Syno...

Episode 179: For today’s guest episode it is a welcome return for Kay Daly to the podcast.  In our second conversation Kay discusses Jonson’s world view and how it differed from Shakespeare’s, which we discussed in our first conversation plays.  If you have not already done so, listening to that conversation, which is episode 177, and my recent episodes on Jonson’s early plays...

Episode 178: Ben Jonson's humours play 'Every Man in His Humour' was a big success and Jonson chose to name his next comedy in a very similar way, just substituting ‘in’ for ‘out’, no doubt to capitalise on the success of the earlier play by letting the public know that this was going to be a play in a very similar vein, and although there are no points where the plots or characters cross over dur...

Episode 177: For today’s guest episode it is a warm welcome for Kay Daly to the podcast.  In our conversation Kay took the opportunity to give an overview of Shakespeare’s world view as seen through his earlier plays and particularly the comedies.  As you will hear we strayed a little into some later plays, but Kay’s thoughts seemed particularly useful at this point as we are a...

Episode 176: In ‘Every Man In His Humour’ Jonson pays a debt to Roman comedy, but also shows us, in an almost fully formed way, his very own style.  This is not the biting satire of many of his plays, but something a little gentler in that he is not taking aim at specific people and certainly not at the court, as he was to do later.  ‘Every Man in His Humour’ is a city comedy w...

Episode 175: On today’s guest episode we welcome Andrea Smith to the podcast.  Andrea’s book ‘Shakespeare on the Radio’ has just been published and she kindly agreed to come on and give us some highlights from her very detailed review of Shakespeare on BBC radio in the last one hundred years. Andrea Smith is a lecturer at the University of Suffolk, specialising in Shakespeare and audio d...