That Shakespeare Life

Latest Episodes:

Ep 164: Iron Gall Ink with Lucas Tucker Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

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 describe common, or standard, ink and as Sir Toby Belch illuminates with his lines, the ink was used to dip your goose-pen into to write letters or any kind of correspondence on paper you wanted to write down. The ink was made from a fermentation of oak galls which is partially where the ink gets it's name, the other part--the iron--comes from the iron salt that is added during the fermentation process to create iron gall ink. Here today to share with us the history of iron gall ink and explain exactly how the ink of Shakespeare's lifetime was created is historical calligrapher, chemist, and owner at Scribal Workshop, Lucas Tucker.

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Ep 163: Crocodiles and Alligators with Spencer Weinreich May 31, 2021

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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, however, when explorers to the New World came home with stories of a new creature similar to the crocodile and unique to North America named the alligator. The alligator is mentioned only once in Shakespeare's works in Act V Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet where it is included on a list of items on display in an apothecary shop. That reference is particularly interesting when you consider that a display of natural specimens in an apothecary shop is very likely one of the real places Shakespeare himself might have encountered one. Here to take us back to the mid 1590s as Shakespeare wrote about the alligator in Romeo and Juliet and explain for us what 16th century science believed about the alligator/crocodile is our guest, Spencer Weinreich.

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Ep 162: The Grass Snake and the Basilisk with Rob Lenders May 24, 2021

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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 applied to a real snake that made its home across Northern Europe when Shakespeare was writing about basilisks in his plays. Our guest this week is author of The Grass Snake and the Basilisk, a research project that takes a historical perspective on how the specific attributes of human life in Elizabethan England created an ideal home for the grass snake, an animal who defends itself by creating a death like gaze. We are pleased to welcome Rob Lender to the show this week to explain the history of the real animal Shakespeare calls a basilisk.

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Ep 161: The Mermaid Tavern with Michelle O'Callaghan May 17, 2021

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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 Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen, a drinking club that met on the first Friday of the month and is thought to have included famous members, most with very close ties to Shakespeare. Men like Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, and Francis Beaumont, were thought to have been members and there are a few scholars who think that William Shakespeare might have been among the members of this club as well. Our guest this week, Michelle O'Callaghan, is a historical researcher into the history of English taverns, and the author of the article Patrons of the Mermaid Tavern. She joins us today to share the story of the Mermaid Tavern, what we can know about the Fraternity of Gentlemen who met there, and what her research concludes about whether Shakespeare might have attended.

Michelle O'Callaghan is a Professor of Early Modern Literature and currently Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading. She has published extensively on early modern literature and culture, from the Inns of Court and tavern societies to women's engagement in literary cultures. Her major books are The 'shepheards nation': Jacobean Spenserians and early Stuart political culture, 1612-1625 (Oxford, 2000), The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007), Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist (Edinburgh, 2009), and, most recently, Crafting Poetry Anthologies in Renaissance England: Early Modern Cultures of Recreation, which was published by Cambridge University Press in December, 2020.

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Ep 160: Characterie and Elizabethan Short Hand with Bryan Crockett May 10, 2021

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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 complicated array of symbols and characters that while intimidating to review today, was a huge hit in Elizabethan England, with several additional shorthand methods being published in England within just a few years of Bright's work. Walking the line between illegal behavior and artistic prowess, masters of shorthand in the late 16th century are responsible for many of the surviving copies of the sermons from Shakespeare's lifetime, and our guest this week argues in his publication, Shakespeare, Playfere, and the Pirates, that shorthand may be behind the many errors we find in Shakespeare's Bad Quartos. The obvious question when you realize audience members at The Globe theater were writing down the play as they heard it is to wonder, how did they accomplish that feat in the age of quill pens and in wells? And did they get arrested for pirating the works of the greatest playwrights of the age? Here this week to explain the mechanics of stealing words from the air as they are spoken, what kind of impact charactery had on the theater culture of the 16th century, as well as the mechanics of Tom Bright's 16th century disruptive innovation, is our guest Bryan Crockett.

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Ep 159: Elizabethan Dogs with Jeff Crosby and Shelley Ann Jackson May 03, 2021

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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 in how to build kennels, how to feed, and even how to groom hunting dogs. When it came to choosing the right dog for the job, there were specific breeds of dogs that were favored for particular sport. Shakespeare gives us a glimpse into the world of dogs and favoring specific breeds when he mentions "hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves" in Macbeth Act III. Shakespeare uses the word dog or hound over 200 times across his works, writing about spaniels, beagles, the Thessalian bull (considered to be an ancestor to the basset hound), and the Iceland dog in 4 additional plays.

Here today to help us explore the husbandry of dogs popular in Elizabethan England, which ones were used for bull and bear baiting, as well as what we can know about the breeds Shakespeare calls out by name in his plays are our guests and co authors of, "Little Lions, Bull Baiters, and Hunting Hounds", Jeff Crosby and Shelley Ann Jackson.

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Ep 158: Excavating Bull Ring Market with Steve Thomson Apr 26, 2021

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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 21st century, Bull Ring Market is still being used as an open air market, selling fish, meat, poultry, exotic vegetables, and even household supplies. But how did the market get from the 12th century to today, and why has the original purpose survived so many centuries? Headland Archaeology discovered some answers about the history of Bull Ring Market when they conducted an archaeological dig at Beorma Quarter, close to Bull Ring Market. Today, our guest, Steve Thomson, lead archaeologist for this project, is here today to share with us what they found during Phase 1 of their excavation of Bull Ring Market and what that tells us about how the space was being used in Shakespeare's lifetime.

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Ep 157: Social Order and Architecture with Matthew Johnson Apr 19, 2021

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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 society and establish himself as a gentleman, we have evidence that social mobility was a strong force in England for the 16-17th century. One key place that contemporaries of William Shakespeare were able to show off their status, and stake their claim to a certain place in the social order was through the design, and architecture, of their homes and grand estates. Our guest this week, Matthew Johnson, is here to explain the social phenomenon of upward mobility, define the levels of society that were present for Shakespeare, and walk us through some famous architecture of the 1500s-1600s that reveals where the lines were drawn between the classes for Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

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Ep 156: Rules for 17th C Hunting with Karen Kaiser Lee Apr 12, 2021

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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 and to network with powerful political connections that might advance your station. In her paper, He Cannot Be a Gentleman Which Loveth Not Hawking and Hunting, our guest, Karen Kaiser Lee writes about the popularity of hunting par force under James I and explores the specific hunting treatises that were written during his reign to both define the methods of hunting as well as regulate the kinds of people who would be permitted to participate in this exclusive sport. Karen joins us today to take us inside the world of early modern hunting to look at who was allowed to hunt, what they used for this purpose, and how it helped usher in a new era in English history where a person could move upward in society if they were disciplined enough at a new, and important, skill.

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Ep 155: John Harington with Bob Cromwell Apr 05, 2021

Show notes

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 by his father, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London alongside Elizabeth I. Harington the son would go on to tutor the son of James I during Shakespeare's lifetime. Bob Cromwell is here to share with us some of the historical research that suggests the life of John Harington created such a splash in English society during Shakespeare's lifetime that Shakespeare himself may have included references to Harington in his plays

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