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 small. When it comes to sizes, shapes, material, and uses for napkins in Shakespeare’s lifetime, we are...
Nov 06, 2023•24 min•Ep. 290
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 full moon. The legend of werewolves today is dismissed by the popular mindset and relegated to the ...
Oct 30, 2023•41 min•Ep. 289
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 accompanying characters of the Robin Hood story find their place in Shakespeare’s plays, when in Henry IV Part I...
Oct 23, 2023•32 min•Ep. 288
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, including details about the paper used and the intricate binding, along with how the plays were cho...
Oct 16, 2023•34 min•Ep. 287
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 purpose, place, and reception of ghosts for Shakespeare’s lifetime?Did people believe ghosts were re...
Oct 09, 2023•22 min•Ep. 286
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 ““Drake tooke… a proper negro wench called Maria, which was afterward gotten with child between the c...
Oct 02, 2023•44 min•Ep. 285
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 expression from the Middle ages called “appel of paradis” which refers to a banana. The apple fruit fea...
Sep 25, 2023•42 min•Ep. 284
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 drag an inflated pig’s bladder to markers at each end of town. Shakespeare mentions this game twice...
Sep 18, 2023•27 min•Ep. 283
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 to tell us about the history and importance of The Great Bed of Ware, is our guest and Curator, Fur...
Sep 11, 2023•48 min•Ep. 282
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, Stanley Wells, President of Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who joins us to share about his latest book ...
Sep 04, 2023•20 min•Ep. 281
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 who will remove any coughs. Therefore, without more ado, let’s dive in to the history. Profanity is...
Aug 28, 2023•21 min•Ep. 280
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 the 16th century—between 1597 and 1601. Potatoes are thought to have arrived in the late 1580s or ea...
Aug 21, 2023•25 min•Ep. 279
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 in Shakespeare history or indeed even the art world, Steve dove headlong into finding out where this ...
Aug 14, 2023•29 min•Ep. 278
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 it was considered a staple condiment in kitchens of this time period. Amazingly, the mustard has no...
Aug 07, 2023•22 min•Ep. 277
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 life in what were known as “ecclesiastical courts,” or colloquially, the “Bawdy Courts.” Many of th...
Jul 31, 2023•28 min•Ep. 276
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 exclamation points we can find in his works. In the absence of emojis, punctuation was the way that writers ...
Jul 24, 2023•33 min•Ep. 275
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 longtime listener-requested guest, the history time traveler himself, and author of The Time Traveler...
Jul 17, 2023•37 min•Ep. 274
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 this year. Jared is a celebrated fight director and took on the challenge of staging entire battle ...
Jul 10, 2023•35 min•Ep. 273
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 and living accommodation, which was common practice for mediaeval merchants’ dwellings. Therefore, Str...
Jul 03, 2023•30 min•Ep. 272
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 ships to attack Spanish ships, stealing treasure and gaining control of Spanish trade routes in the re...
Jun 26, 2023•32 min•Ep. 271
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 Shakespeare’s works that we only have today because of the printing of the First Folio that happened in 1623. ...
Jun 19, 2023•44 min•Ep. 270
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, and Spanish by the cut of their clothes. While slops and short cloaks are called out in Much Ado A...
Jun 12, 2023•28 min•Ep. 269
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 to understand the reaction of society, whether accomodations were made for disabilities, what those w...
Jun 05, 2023•36 min•Ep. 268
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 promise or form a contract. The history of the time period tells us that Swiss Reformed theologian Johan...
May 29, 2023•44 min•Ep. 267
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 to Protestants. The St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre in the late 16th century saw thousands of Hugueno...
May 22, 2023•22 min•Ep. 266
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, and illustrating thousands of bizarre natural history phenomenon into at least 12 publications, some...
May 15, 2023•33 min•Ep. 265
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. Shakespeare echoes this sentiment in his play, Pericles , when he writes about "golden fruit but dangerous ...
May 08, 2023•22 min•Ep. 264
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 negros in the 16th century which was an agreement between the Spanish crown and a private person or granti...
May 01, 2023•35 min•Ep. 263
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 law. Being outside the mayor’s jurisdiction made Blackfriars especially attractive to entrepreneurs ...
Apr 24, 2023•43 min•Ep. 262
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. Shakespeare himself mentions a few of these games in his plays by name including Noddy, Primrose, and Laugh a...
Apr 17, 2023•26 min•Ep. 261
