In Henry VI Part I , William Shakespeare presents one of history’s most famous characters, a woman, named Joan La Pucelle, known today as Joan of Arc. For the French, she was a truly holy woman, chaste, and pure. She was also a brilliant military strategist and a force to be reckoned with in battle. Nicknamed “the Maid of Orleans,” the real Joan of Arc was a heroine for France during the Hundred Years’ War and would be canonized as a saint. The depiction of Joan La Pucelle in Shakespeare’s play ...
Jul 26, 2021•25 min•Ep. 171
William Braford is most well known today as the man who served as the second governor of Plymouth Colony, leaving Europe for Virginia in 1620 aboard the Mayflower . Prior to this infamous voyage, Bradford was an Englishman whose life overlapped that of William Shakespeare, having been born in Yorkshire, England, when Shakespeare was 26 years old. There’s no evidence to suggest Shakespeare knew Bradford personally, but the life of William Bradford shines a light on a huge aspect of Shakespeare’s ...
Jul 19, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 170
Portraits of ladies and gentlemen from the late 16th century show men and women adorned in all manner of finery, including everything from flowing gowns, to magnificent swords, and even those infamous Tudor ruff collars,but what exactly did it take to get into all those fine outfits? When Shakespeare surveyed his closet in the morning before he got dressed for the day, were there certain items he needed like an undershirt or socks? This week, we are diving into the world of early modern clothing...
Jul 12, 2021•29 min•Ep. 169
When we study court in Shakespeare history the phrase “appeared at court” or “performed at court” frequently gets used to describe what Shakespeare was doing at various points of his life. However, the overlap between “court” legally (as in, where you go for a legal trial) and the social phenomenon of Renaissance England where the monarch gathered their “court” together can make it hard to know what it means to go to court. This week we’ve set out to rectify this gap in knowledge with our guest,...
Jul 05, 2021•35 min•Ep. 168
When William Shakespeare first arrived in London sometime in the 1580s, James Burbage was already making waves in the early modern performance industry by establishing The Theater, a playhouse which the Burbages owned. After a fight with the owner of the land on which The Theater was built, the building itself would be dismantled by the Burbages and William Shakespeare who helped the Burbages clandestinely move the building timber by timber across the Thames to create the theater known as The Gl...
Jun 28, 2021•29 min•Ep. 167
In the 1950s when Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was adapted into West Side Story , popular culture in the US resonated with the gang culture and street fighting depicted on stage because the brass knuckled “rumbles” taking place on streets like those in New York City were current events of the day. Turns out, historically, these gang fights were a real issue for Shakespeare’s lifetime as well, and scenes like Mercutio and Romeo fighting in the streets of Verona, the mob that goes after Cinna th...
Jun 21, 2021•55 min•Ep. 166
It seems even William Shakespeare had household floors to keep clean. While it likely wouldn’t have been the actual William doing the majority of the sweeping in his household, one item the bard seems to have been familiar with through his nineteen uses of the word “sweep” and one use of the word “besom” across his works is the household broom used for sweeping floors. The bard uses “broom” at least 3 times in his plays, mentioning once a broom-staff, and in The Tempest , Shakespeare calls atten...
Jun 14, 2021•20 min•Ep. 165
In Cymbeline , Act I Scene 1 Posthumus Leonatus says “I’ll drink the words you send though ink be made of gall” and in Twelfth Night Sir Toby Belch calls attention to a particular kind of ink when he says “Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen…” in Act III Scene 2. Both of these scenes from Shakespeare’s plays are referencing the most popular kind of ink used in Shakespeare’s lifetime and that is iron gall ink. The phrase iron gall ink was a phrase used to descr...
Jun 07, 2021•24 min•Ep. 164
Shakespeare mentions the word “crocodile” five times in his plays, but crocodiles not being native to England must have been introduced to the bard from outside his natural habitat there in London. The crocodile itself was well known in English literature, having been written about in association with Egypt and Africa by writers like Pliny the Elder centuries prior to Shakespeare. This particular beast was brought back to the forefront of popular imagination during Shakespeare’s lifetime, howeve...
May 31, 2021•49 min•Ep. 163
In Elizabethan England, the basilisk was a feared and hateful creature, capable of killing someone with just a glance. Of the 8 references to basilisks in Shakespeare’s plays, half of these invoke the reputation of being able to kill with a look. European bestiaries record the basilisk as a legendary serpent ruling as King of the reptiles and while the folklore far outpaces the science, recent historical studies of animals from Elizabethan England reveal that the basilisk may have been a term ap...
May 24, 2021•21 min•Ep. 162
In Elizabethan England on the corner of Friday Street and Bread Street was a fine dining and drinking establishment called the Mermaid Tavern. The building itself burned down in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but the legend of this storied tavern lives on through the records of people like Ben Jonson and 17th century travel writer Thomas Coryat, who wrote about the Mermaid Tavern in the early 1600s, when Shakespeare was in his late 40s to early 50s, describing it as the meeting place of Frate...
May 17, 2021•39 min•Ep. 161
In 1588, one man named Tom Bright introduced an innovative new method for quickly writing down what you hear during a live performance, publishing a manual he called “Charactery.” A term of Bright’s own invention, Charactery is the first English version of an ancient method of shorthand dating back to the time of Cicero, that allowed anyone to pirate versions of live performance, provided they had enough patience to learn the complicated system. Bright’s innovative technology applied a complicat...
May 10, 2021•32 min•Ep. 160
In Elizabethan England two of the most popular forms of public entertainment were animal baiting and hunting. Bull and bear baiting happened in a dedicated arena while hunting was usually done on private lands or hunting parks where private, usually very elite, groups of people would gather for the hunt. What each of these sports has in common is they both employ use of dogs. Hunting dogs were raised meticulously with manuals from Shakespeare’s lifetime outlining the detailed husbandry involved ...
May 03, 2021•32 min•Ep. 159
Bull Ring market in Birmingham, England, UK was first known as Corn Cheaping because in the 12th century, which is when we have the first reference to Corn Cheaping, it was used as a corn market. Corn Cheaping had an iron ring setup on a grassy section of Corn Cheaping that was used as a bull baiting arena, where bulls who had been selected for slaughter would be tied and baited for entertainment before being processed into meat. That’s where the name Bull Ring Market comes from. Today, in the 2...
Apr 26, 2021•30 min•Ep. 158
As students of Shakespeare’s lifetime, often we see the phrase “of certain status” to describe 16-17th century limitations on clothes, housing, and other material realities for various people. Particular if you study Elizabethan sumptuary laws, it seems like society was strictly controlled based on social status, and one’s place in society was decided at birth, with little mobility allowed. The life of people like William Shakespere, however, who in his own life was able to rise in the ranks of ...
Apr 19, 2021•32 min•Ep. 157
In Elizabethan England, the Queen is immortalized in woodcuts that show her fondness for the sport of hawking. By the time James I comes to the throne in 1603, hawking is surpassed by a form of hunting called par force where animals like dogs and horses are used to round up prey. While the practical aspect of hunting animals for meat was utilized in these hunting expeditions, arguably the primary function of going hunting was to establish yourself as a member of a higher order of social status a...
Apr 12, 2021•33 min•Ep. 156
This week is Part 2 in our 2 part series on John Harington, the man who invented the first flush toilet in England. Our guest, Bob Cromwell, is back again this week to take us back to 16th century England and explore the exciting life of John Harington beyond his invention of the flush toilet. Harington was known as a literary figure, primarily for his translation of Orlando Furioso, and was a godson to Elizabeth I as well as a courtier in the royal court. Harington’s destiny was set into motion...
Apr 05, 2021•46 min•Ep. 155
There has been a bridge over the river Thames since the time of the Romans and the reign of Aethelred II, when the bridge was designed as a Saxon defense against the Danish. Since then, there have been at least 5 bridges either built, or repairs made to the predecessor, which have occupied the crossing of the Thames at London Bridge. The original structure we think of as the first London Bridge was located about 100 feet east of today’s London Bridge. There was a London Bridge stretched across t...
Mar 01, 2021•30 min•Ep. 150
When we think of unicorns, we most often think of the mythical creature roaming forests in Europe or if you are from the UK, you’ll likely make a connection with the famous nursery rhyme about the Lion and the Unicorn. In addition to being the national animal for Scotland, and a symbol of their strength and independence, for Shakespeare and the 16th century society in Scotland, the unicorn is a type of currency. Scotland's unicorn is not only a national legend and official symbol, but also a coi...
Sep 23, 2019•22 min•Ep. 75
Barbara Traister is the author of The Notorious Astrological Physician of London , and Heavenly Necromancers: The Magician in English Renaissance Drama , as well as former Professor of English at Lehigh University. She joins us today to look at some of Shakespeare’s examples of medicine depicted in his plays and explore where Shakespeare got it right, and some of the hidden messages we can discover in the text by understanding the realities of astrology and 17th century medicine. In this episode...
Jul 16, 2018•33 min•Ep. 13
