That Shakespeare Life

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Ep 134: Thomas Kyd with Darren Freebury Jones Nov 09, 2020

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The English playwright Thomas Kyd is one of Shakespeare's contemporaries who arguably has as much, if not more, influence on the development of Renaissance theater than even the bard himself. Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy is thought to have introduced to 16th century English theater a tragic format Shakespeare would later apply in his famous tragedy, Hamlet. Little is known about the life of Thomas Kyd, but what we do know is astonishing. He was a roommate with Christopher Marlowe, suspected of treason, accused of being an atheist, and had the entire memory of his life rest on a single letter he wrote to decry claims against him. He died in December of 1594, leaving a powerful mark on the theater industry and establishing himself a permanent place in the life of William Shakespeare.

Here this week to introduce us to Thomas Kyd and the history we have about his life as a fellow playwright alongside William Shakespeare in turn of the 17th century England is our returning guest and respected friend, Darren Freebury Jones.

Ep 133: King Leir with Mathew Morris Nov 02, 2020

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Shakespeare's play King Lear is based upon the story of the ancient British King who founded Leicester in England, written by Geoffrey Monmouth. Monmouth based his story on real elements of Leicester's history, including the Jewry Wall and ancient roman tombs, some of which are still there in Leicester today. For the 16th century, this story was already hugely popular when Shakespeare decided to adapt it for his play version. The story was so tied up with the city of Leicester, that historians believe the visit of the King's Men to Leicester in 1606 was specifically to perform King Lear, which had been written that same year. While the framework of Shakespeare's version does seem to follow in Monmouth's footsteps, there are specific elements in Shakespeare's version which are strikingly similar to actual court cases in 17th c England which were captivating the cultural mindset at the time. There were real court cased being heard in 1605-1606 involving men accused of madness by their daughters, and the names of these daughters are just a few letters off from the name Cordelia which Shakespeare named one of Lear's daughters in his play. Details like these are tantalizing to explore, and we have invited our guest this week, Mathew Morris, who knows the archaeological history of Leicester best, to help us sort out the real history from the legend of King Leir.

Ep 132: Archery in Shakespeare's England with Lyn Tribble Oct 26, 2020

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In the late 1590s as William Shakespeare was writing Henry V, and the famous battle scene of Agincourt, there was a cultural battle going on between the older and younger generations of men in England concerning the use of the longbow. As Shakespeare staged Henry V in 1605, he did so with the obvious absence of the very longbows that are considered responsible for the English victory at the Battle of Agincourt. Similarly, Christopher Marlowe sidesteps the use of archery in his portrayal of Tamburlaine, when the real Tamberlaine was famous for his skills with a recurve, or Eastern-style bow. These omissions are made even more striking when we consider that scholars and historians like John Smythe and Roger Ascham were writing treatises at this time making a plea to the young men of England to take up the longbow once more in what they saw as the quintessentially English weapon to use. With an absence of teachers in the art of archery, having been replaced by the booming fencing industry coming over from Italy at this time, these pleas to take up the longbow fell on deaf ears for most of England's young men who saw the sword as the more popular weapon of choice.

Here to help us step into the moment when England was divided in their opinion about archery and young men were turning their sights on the sword while older men went so far as to pass laws to try and save the dying art of using a longbow, we can see through the silences in Shakespeare's history plays, as well as those of his contemporaries, that the case for archery in early modern England demonstrates what Lyn Tribble describes as "the intergenerational tensions and discords that arise from [trying to bring together the mindset of the] late medieval period into the very different "mental universe" of the late Elizabethan period."

Lyn joins us this week to help us explore this mental universe, as well as the cultural divide between archery and swords that existed for Shakespeare, and what we can learn from the obvious absences of the longbow in his plays.

Ep 131: Rapiers with Tobias Capwell Oct 19, 2020

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The 16th century was the first time English history, and the first time in most of European history, that the average person started carrying a weapon as a matter of daily life. The rapier specifically came into fashion in England in the mid 16th century, and while it plays a prominent role in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare mentions the rapier specifically over 30 times in his plays including Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, and the Henriad plays. The specific terminology Shakespeare has characters like Mercutio use which refer to passado, staccato, and the punto reverso were Italian fencing terms from manual being published at the same time Romeo and Juliet was written. More than just a reference to a single manual, though, as our guest this week points out, rapier fencing was a huge cultural moment in England with official edicts from Elizabeth I being passed to try and limit or even outright ban the use of rapiers in London, as some of the noblemen in England were actively hiring Italian fencing masters specifically to be trained in this new, and rapidly popular art of rapier fencing. Here this week to take us back to the 1590s and explore the moment in history and explain what was going on in the very moment that William Shakespeare had Mercutio call Tybalt a cat who fights from the book of arithmetic, is our guest Tobias Capwell.

Ep 130: Sonnets with Stanley Wells Oct 12, 2020

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Have you ever wondered why Shakespeare wrote sonnets or what purpose it served to learn iambic pentameter? Here to share with us the history of sonnets for the 16th century and explain why a playwright wrote poetry is our guest, Stanley Wells.

Ep 129: Industrious Servant with James Tink Oct 05, 2020

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Society in Elizabethan England is well known for being divided by class. There were workers, peasants, aristocracy, and even a kind of middle class but what was the definition of a labourer? When it comes to exploring the roles of characters like Ariel and Caliban in Shakespeare's Tempest it is important to understand the 16th century mindset towards labor. Under Catholic England, the monasteries had decided they placed a higher value on the ability to commune with your thoughts and labor at intellectual pursuits, whereas Protestant England had leanings toward a more active, physical labor as being more valuable, particularly an emphasis on trades like making gloves, shoes, or wool. The practical aspects of everyday life in England like food to eat, houses to live in, and clothes to wear were all built on the value of craftsmen, tradesmen, servants, laborers, and what Henry V might have called England's yeomen. But what is an industrious servant precisely? Can we recognize one when we see them on stage? What are the appearances, actions, or conditions of a servant for Tudor England, and what was Shakespeare trying to draw attention to with characters like Ariel who spend most of the play, The Tempest, yearning for his freedom. To explore the realities of servanthood, including where superstition overlaps with practicality to create a suspicion of magic associated with good craftsmanship is our guest, James Tink.

Ep 128: Longbows with Alan Odinson Sep 28, 2020

Show notes

Following its prominent use in the decisive victory of the English against the French in the Battle of Agincourt, the English longbow was a stalwart image of English patriotism well into the 1590s. Having been a favorite weapon for the famous Kings of England like Henry V, but also Edward III and Elizabeth I's father, Henry VIII, the English longbow was a tried and true military technology that was as uniquely deadly as it was uniquely English.

While it may have fallen out of favor among England's young men by the time Shakespeare staged Henry V, the longbow nevertheless influenced the life of William Shakespeare. But what was this weapon? How was it used? And why was it effective against strong defenses like metal armour in battle? Here today to share with us how the English longbow is made, which materials are best for crafting the large and heavy bow, as well as how the English longbow became established as a permanent fixture in the history of England is our guest Alan Odinson.

Ep 127: Whifflers with Tracey Hill Sep 21, 2020

Show notes

Tracey Hill is here to tell us about Whifflers in 16th c England. A traditional fixture in pageants that appears in Shakespeare's Henry V.

Ep 126: Shakespeare in Parts with Tiffany Stern Sep 14, 2020

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Inside Tiffany Stern's book titled "Shakespeare in Parts" which she co-authored with Simon Palfrey, there is a picture of a piece of paper captioned "The part of Orlando from Robert Greene's Orlando Furioso" from the 1590s. The image represents the historical reality that for Shakespeare, plays were always distributed in parts--meaning a single actor would have had a copy of what his character was supposed to say, but when he was on stage to perform those lines, he would be hearing the words of his fellow characters often for the first time, generating, as you might expect, some pretty dramatic responses from the players themselves. This image of the lines for Robert Greene's Orlando is additionally fascinating because not only is it hand written in ink on paper (instead of printed with type pressed letters the way we find plays inside the First Folio, for example) but aside from some lines across the page periodically to indicate a separation between spoken lines, there isn't anything else on the page at all. It surprises me, quite honestly, because visually, this 16th century script looks totally different from modern play scripts. So why is the script written in a single part instead of having everyone's lines all together? Is this the way players acted in the theater--everyone in their own part instead of bringing it all together as a group? Here to help us answer these questions and explore the research from her book, Shakespeare in Parts, about the history of scripts, performance, and the assumptions we make about what really happened when Shakespeare's actors performed 16th century plays, is our guest Tiffany Stern.

Ep 125: University Spies with Robert Stefanek Sep 07, 2020

Show notes

When Queen Elizabeth sought to root out Catholic uprising in her country, and to quelch potential plots against her in England, it is well known that she turned to spies and spymasters within her court to find, identify, and execute anyone who was a threat to the crown. One key method Elizabeth used to make sure the new generation of English boys supported her government and the Protestant religion was through indoctrination. What better place to teach them how to act, and how to think, than at university. Universities like Cambridge and Oxford were, during Shakespeare's lifetime and well after, used by the government as a place to teach, as well as to root out, anyone who held sympathies for the wrong cause. As theater and performance formed a huge foundation for education in the 16th century, plays like Shakespeare's Hamlet, were often used as a way to facilitate these goals, frequently blurring the lines between education and the intention to imbue young minds with what Elizabeth saw as the right way to think and believe. Our guest this week, Robert Stefanek, has researched spies in Elizabethan England and how Hamlet being a student at Wittenberg University may be much more than a passing nod as his youth and status as a student. Robert contends that being a student at university specifically is a reflection of the entire culture of spies, undercover agents, and covert operations that defined a university structure that in Tudor England was designed, right down to the very walls of the buildings themselves, to confine, control, and indoctrinate, a new generation of young men that Elizabeth wanted to see graduate as her allies.

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