That Shakespeare Life

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Ep 174: Elizabethan Hair Care & Wigs with Sue Prichard Aug 16, 2021

Show notes

The wig was first introduced to England around 1572, when Shakespeare was only 8 years old. The fashion would catch on very quickly in England, promoted by the Queen herself, who was known for wearing wigs in her older years, and defined by her naturally curly red hair in her youth. There are over 100 references to "hair" across Shakespeare's works, many of them calling attention to the color of the hair, and assigning value not only to particular colors, but also reflecting the importance of keeping one's hair neatly tended. In Henry V, the Duke of Burgundy says that prisoners are notable for being "overgrown with hair" and in Henry VI Part II, the Earl of Warwick defines a "ghastly" man as being recognizable by how his "well proportioned beard [is] made rough and rugged." Later in that same play, Winchester, calls attention to the cultural importance of a well kept grooming regime when he associates a demonstrative problem with wild hair. He says, "Comb down his hair; look, look! it stands upright." These are just a few references in Shakespeare's plays that reveal to us the kinds of hair, combs, dye, and periwigs--the now archaic term used in Shakespeare's lifetime to describe a wig--that were present during the life of the bard. Here to today to help us explore the vanity table of the 16th century and examine exactly what were the kind of Elizabethan wigs, hair dye, hair brushes, and toilette products used for women (and men) of turn of the 17th century London, is our guest and contributor to the Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits exhibition at the Royal Museum Greenwich, Sue Prichard. This exhibition is a collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, London, and features 500 years of royal portraiture that offers us today a view into the story of haircare from Shakespeare's lifetime. This exhibition is now on display at the Royal Museum Greenwich and we will link you to more information on how to see this exhibition in today's show notes.

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Ep 173: Bridewell Prison with Duncan Salkeld Aug 09, 2021

Show notes

Bridewell Palace was built in the early 16th century as a residence for King Henry VIII. The palace was a unique structure because it deviated from the architectural designs of the time period by not having a great hall and featuring an elaborate staircase. It was also constructed around a large inner courtyard. Under Edward VI in the 1550s, Bridewell Palace was given to the City of London as a home for the city's homeless children and a place of punishment for "disorderly women." It was run in conjunction with Bedlam Hospital throughout Shakespeare's lifetime and formed the blueprint for later large prisons, including the Clirkenwell Bridwell prison opened as a correctional institute for prostitutes and vagrants in 1615 and Tothill Fields Bridewell prison that was opened in 1618 in Westminster. The building itself was mostly destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, but the reputation of Bridwell would far outlast the original structure, with the term "bridewell" continuing in use around the world into the present day as a term for a city's detention facility, usually close to a courthouse. Here today to explain the history of Bridewell Prison is our guest, Duncan Salkeld.

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Ep 172: Roderigo Lopez with Susan Abernethy Aug 02, 2021

Show notes

Born in Portugal, Dr. Roderigo Lopez fled to England in the 16th century as a Jewish refugee. His family was Jewish, forced to convert to Catholicism, and when he arrived in England he joined the Church of England to become Protestant while still practicing Jewish rituals at home. Serving at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1576, Lopez rose through the ranks as a doctor until he was the Chief Physician there. He served as doctor to some of England's most notable dignitaries including Sir Francis Walsingham, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex, and even Queen Elizabeth herself. These highly prestigious professional connections were a boon for Dr. Lopez' medical career, but the danger of these connections led to Dr. Lopez being entangled with spies and ultimately to his execution on grounds of plotting an assasination against Queen Elizabeth. The scandal of Dr. Lopez' trial in 1594 happened while Shakespeare was in London, and the cultural anti-semitism of 16th century England that played a role in Lopez' conviction is echoed in some of the references to Jews we find in Shakespeare's plays. Here today to tell us the story of Roderigo Lopez and his part in the life of William Shakespeare is our guest, Susan Abernethy.

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Ep 171: Joan La Pucelle with Carole Levin Jul 26, 2021

Show notes

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 is an intriguing investigation because as Shakespeare was depicting this famous heroine on the 16th century stage, the Hundred Years' War would have been recent history for the audience, and at the time it was presented, England was not friends with France. In the play, Shakespeare leaves us a pile of cultural realities to unpack with his depiction of Joan La Pucelle, with not only her overt military leadership in a society where women were not called upon to lead armies, but she is also involved in the occult, consulting demons prior to battle, and she claims she is both pregnant as well as a virgin during her trial. Our guest this week, Carole Levin, is an expert in the history of Joan La Pucelle and the depiction of her for Shakespeare's lifetime. She joins us today to explore false pregnancy claims in early modern England and to compare the real history of Joan of Arc with Shakespeare's fictional presentation of her.

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Ep 170: William Bradford with David and Aaron Bradford Jul 19, 2021

Show notes

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 life: the presence and subsequent response to religious extremism in England. Queen Elizabeth restored Protestantism to England in 1559, along with requirements that everyone attend Protestant Church services. Many religious groups refused, moving to underground church services that were decidedly illegal in England. One of the people who attended such services was a young William Bradford. Relations with religious groups in England remained a tense tightwire act across two monarchs of Shakespeare's life, a situation we can see reflected in Shakespeare's Puritan character named Malvolio in Twelfth Night. The character is publicly humiliated while simultaneously painted as someone with whom we can sympathize. The duality of the character itself is a powerful reflection of the sentiments of England at the start of the 17th century. Efforts like the publication of the King James Bible in 1609 attempted to find a common ground with the Puritans, but peace could not be found, with arrests of religious dissenters increasing under James I and leading ultimately to groups like Bradford and the Pilgrims, leaving England entirely in the early 1600s. Here today to help us explore the life of William Bradford, explain the distinction between Puritans and Pilgrims, as well as the reality of religious extremists like the Anabaptists and Scottish Presbyterians, going on in England during Shakespeare's lifetime is our guests, and direct descendants of William Bradford himself, David and Aaron Bradford.

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Ep 169: Tudor Underwear with Bess Chilver Jul 12, 2021

Show notes

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 to look at what Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and his female counterparts would have worn under their clothes. Our guest this week is Tudor clothier and historical costumer, Bess Chilvers, who joins us to answer questions (some of which have been submitted by our members here at That Shakespeare Life), about what kind of underwear there would have been for people in turn of the 17th century England, including underwear, support garments, apparati needed for wigs, socks, and more.

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Ep 168: Court with Natalie Mears Jul 05, 2021

Show notes

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, Natalie Mears, who is here to share her research into Courts, Courtiers, and Culture in Tudor England, an article which she published in The Historical Journal back in 2003. In that paper, Natalie cites a play by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville called Gorboduc that was performed in 1561-1562 at court, and that play is an example of how performances were used to not only comment on events of the day by the performers (similar to what you might think of today as an editorial cartoon) but in the case of Gorboduc, the play commented directly to Elizabeth I to try and influence her decision to marry and to comment on Robert Dudley as a potential candidate. Natalie's work goes on to cite sermons selected by James VI and I to scold the Scottish Presbyterians at Hampton Court in 1606, as well as a sermon by Edward Dering in 1570 that "lambasted the Queen" for perceived failures at political reform. These examples have us wondering if the instances of Shakespeare appearing at court were more than just event entertainment. Were plays like Shakespeare's similar political weapons in the same way as Gorboduc? Would Shakespeare's plays have been brought to court for their power to influence politics and if so, does that explain why Shakespeare wrote so frequently about political issues? Natalie Mears joins us today to answer some of these questions about Shakespeare and Court Life

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Ep 167: Shareholders with Lucy Munro Jun 28, 2021

Show notes

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 Globe. Today, we refer to The Globe, as well as the first indoor playhouse, the Blackfriars, as Shakespeare's theaters. Of course, the bard was intimately involved and arguably held a position of leadership in these establishments but defining terms from his lifetime like shareholder, leaseholder, and housekeeper, all help us take a closer look at who exactly owned the theater and how that was different from being an owner in a playing company. Our guest this week, Lucy Munro, is the author of the article for King's College London, titled "Who Owned the Blackfriars Playhouse" and she is here with us today to share the mechanics behind theater and playing company ownership in the 16-17th century, as well as to answer the question of whether Shakespeare really did own the theaters we give him credit for today.

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Ep 166: Elizabethan Street Fighting with Casey Kaleba Jun 21, 2021

Show notes

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 the Poet in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and the tavern brawls that break out in several scenes across Shakespeare's works would have been viewed by Shakespeare's 16th century audience as a reflection of their current events and realities of life on the streets of Elizabethan London. Here this week to help us explore the 16th century history, current events, street fights and even gangs that were present during Shakespeare's lifetime as he wrote about the Capulets and Montagues being "warring families" duking it out in the streets of Verona, is our guest and expert in Elizabethan street crime and one of the Washington, DC, area's most sought-after fight coaches for stage plays, Casey Kaleba.

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Ep 165: The Broom Besom with Wendy Wall Jun 14, 2021

Show notes

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 attention to a "broom-grove" suggesting there was a particular plant or tree used for growing the material to make brooms in the 16th century. Here today to help us explore the people who made brooms, exactly who was doing the sweeping in Shakespeare's lifetime, as well as the folklore surrounding the broom also called broom-besom, is our guest and author of "Why does Puck Sweep?" the article examining the household cleaning scene of one of Shakespeare's most famous characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Please welcome our guest, Wendy Wall.

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