That Shakespeare Life

Latest Episodes:

Episode 44: Paul Edmondson Talks Heminges and Condell Feb 18, 2019

Show notes

If the saying is true that you are the sum of your five closest friends, then one great way to get to know William Shakespeare is to take a look at the lives of his closest friends. John Heminges and Henry Condell helped form the foundation of the shareholder agreement Shakespeare made at The Globe and the Lord Chamberlain's Men. They would remain loyal to Shakespeare from Elizabethan England into Jacobean England as the company became the King's Men under James I. Acting in plays together, writing plays, surviving the Globe's famous fire, and watching each other get married, have children, and grow old together is a stronger definition of friendship than many people ever get to experience, and by all historical accounts, Heminges and Condell were just such strong friends for William Shakespeare not just until his death in 1616, but through the publication of the 1623 First Folio, and continuing ever after.

As our guest this week, we are delighted to have Paul Edmondson, the Head of Research at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and the author of one chapter about Heminges and Condell that appeared in the recent book he edited called The Shakespeare Circle. We welcome Paul today to discuss his chapter on Heminges and Condell and help us get to know Shakespeare's extraordinary friends.

Episode 43: Jonathan Bate & The Genius of Shakespeare Feb 11, 2019

Show notes

William Shakespeare started out the son of a glove maker in a small town in England, and went on to become the greatest playwright the world has ever seen. How does one person accomplish so much? What did it take, exactly, for Shakespeare to become a genius? Was he born with particular gifts and talents no one else has seen or heard of again in the last 400 years? Or has our love of Shakespeare inflated his reputation beyond what it deserves?One man who has argued in the public arena specifically for Shakespeare, the man, is our guest this week, Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate. Knighted in 2015 for services to literary scholarship and higher education, Jonathan Bate is also a British academic, biographer, critic, and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism, and Ecocriticism as the Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, Gresham Professor of Rhetoric, and Honorary Fellow of Creativity at Warwick Business School. His most recent book is the subject of our interview today, and that is titled The Genius of Shakespeare. In his book, Sir Jonathan examines the life of William Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, to outline how one man becomes a genius. We are delighted to have Sir Jonathan here with us today to discuss some of the answers he discovered in writing his book.

Episode 42: The Daily Diet of Shakespeare with Brigitte Webster Feb 04, 2019

Show notes

Even Shakespeare had to eat. We laud Shakespeare as a man who helped reinvent the theater industry, and someone who would pen some of the greatest lines in all of antiquity, and establish a reputation that lasted at the top of his game for over 400 years. But what did someone like that eat for breakfast? It certainly wasn't Wheaties powering that legacy, so what kind of foods did Shakespeare enjoy? Here to help us explore the daily eating habits of the Tudor period, including people like William Shakespeare, is a guest who knows more than most about the daily lives of Tudors since she leads an exploratory experience at her beautiful Tudor home. Brigitte Webster is the owner and founder at Tudor and 17th Century Experience, a unique living history centre with authentic accommodations that let visitors step back in history to experience life in England's 17th century. Offering designated open days, "taster days ", weekends and custom-made holidays, Brigitte's unique home lets guests travel back in time to fall in love with 17th century English history.

Episode 41: 16th Century Landlords with Callan Davies Jan 28, 2019

Show notes

Elizabeth I issued several proclamations during her reign concerning property, renting, and housing in England. London proper would see it's population more than double over the course of Shakespeare's lifetime, and there was very little in the way of any government concerning who could rent the limited available space owned in the city, what they could charge, or even basic safety regulations. Historical documents tell us that William Shakespeare himself rented property in London, with the landlord and tenant documents being some of the few tangible paper records we have at all of William Shakespeare's life. So why was the world's leading playwright renting a room in London not unlike a poor college student, instead of owning property outright? And what can the history of landlords in England help us learn about the life of William Shakespeare? Here to help us explore the history of tenants and renting property in 16th century England is Callan Davies, a Research Fellow on the "Before Shakespeare" project, based at the University of Roehampton.

Episode 40: Frances Dolan on 16th Century Marriage Jan 21, 2019

Show notes

From Merry Wives of Windsor, to Measure for Measure, Alls Well That Ends Well, and others, the role of marriage plays a big role in Shakespeare's plays, determines the action, defining the characters, and living on several assumptions about the marriage institution. But what are those assumptions, exactly? As a modern audience member, what do we need to know about marriage in Shakespeare's lifetime, and how has it changed over the last 400 years? Will these changes impact how we receive Shakespeare's stories?Here to help us find the answers to these questions and explore the history of marriage, Shakespeare's own marriage to Anne Hathaway, and what we can take away from the displays of marriage in Shakespeare's plays, is our guest Frances Dolan. Frances is a Distinguished Professor English at UC Davis, Her work focuses on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In 2004-5, she served as the President of the Shakespeare Association of America. She has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (at the Newberry Library and the Folger Library), and the Monticello College Foundation. In November of 2018, she led a Folger Weekend Seminar on Agriculture in the 16th century, and she is the author of the article, "Shakespeare and Marriage" for UCDavis that we have invited her here to speak with us about today.

Episode 39: Sarah Enloe and The Blackfriars Theater Jan 14, 2019

Show notes

When we talk about Shakespeare's theaters, most often we mean The Globe, with it's iconic "O' shape, we sometimes forget that Shakespeare's plays were actually performed in a variety of venues, and that William was involved in starting the first indoor theater anywhere in the world when he, and his longtime business partner Richard Burbage, established the then-risky venue, The Blackfriars.

With the only accurate replica of The Blackfriars in the world, no one knows the history of this theater better than The American Shakespeare Center, which is why we've asked Sarah Enloe, the Director of Education at The ASC to visit with us today and take us behind the curtain to look at the history of Shakespeare's lesser known, but equally as innovative, indoor theater, The Blackfriars.

Episode 38: Aubrey Whitlock Explains Exit Pursued by a Bear Jan 07, 2019

Show notes

In Shakespeare's play, The Winter's Tale, there is a famous stage direction where the character Antigonus exits the stage but the written directions in the play state that he is to "exit, pursued by a bear." So in performance, this character exits as a bear, seemingly from nowhere, arrives to chase him off the stage and into Shakespeare legend. Here to help us look at the history and context of this famous stage direction, is Aubrey Whitlock.

Episode 37: Francois Laroque Explains Twelfth Night Dec 31, 2018

Show notes

When it comes to Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night--other than the title and the use of role reversal, there's seemingly very little to suggest Shakespeare's play is anything but another comedy. In fact, modern stagings have often found it difficult to revive the play as a holiday feature due precisely to its' lack of holiday content. However, when we explore the history of the holiday itself, and some of the political associations contained in the specific time in history when Shakespeare penned this play, we discover not only on how Shakespeare may have celebrated this iconic holiday, but on how the play Twelfth Night may be more of a Christmas production than we first realized. Here to help us take a look behind the curtain and into the history of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, as well as to examine the common holiday traditions associated with the festival, is our guest François Laroque.

François Laroque is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and early modern drama at Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. He is the author of Shakespeare's Festive World (CUP, 1991), and of Court, Crowd and Playhouse (Thames & Hudson, 1993). He has also co-edited a two-volume anthology of Elizabethan Theatre (Gallimard, Paris, 2009) and published translations of Marlowe's and of Shakespeare's plays. His last book is a Dictionnaire amoureux de Shakespeare ("In love with Shakespeare. A personal dictionary"), Paris, Plon, 2016.

Dr. Laroque joins us today to take us behind the curtain and into Shakespeare's celebration of the popular 16-17th century holiday, Twelfth Night to look specifically at how an understanding of the holiday celebrations could make the play more of a festive performance than it is typically given credit.

Episode 36: Emily Ireson Shares Shakespeare's Christmas Traditions Dec 24, 2018

Show notes

With the holidays upon us, this Christmas Eve we wanted to celebrate with our favorite Elizabethan: William Shakespeare.

Christmas was a popular celebration even 400 years ago and from the time young William was born growing up in Stratford Upon Avon, England, there were several important traditions that he used to mark the holiday with his family and friends. Here to help us explore the Christmas traditions surrounding the kinds of foods and festivities the bard would have eaten or participated in for his Christmas time is the Town House Steward and Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Emily Ireson.

Every Christmas Emily is in charge of dressing Shakespeare's childhood home to reflect a traditional Elizabethan Christmas, including Twelfth Night and seasonal festivities. With a Masters in Museum studies from the University of Glasgow, specifically studying Fashion and Culture of the 17-19th centuries, Emily joins us today to share with us the details of Christmas in the 17th century, and what it takes to celebrate a Shakespearean Christmas.

Episode 35: Why Shakespeare Used Iambic Pentameter with Susan Dalzell Dec 17, 2018

Show notes

William Shakespeare is almost synonymous with iambic pentameter, his famous plays making this popular rhyme scheme famous as well. From Chaucer to King James I and Edmund Spenser, iambic pentameter flowed through English classical verse and the stages of The Globe and Blackfriars, prolifically dominating the spoken word in performances all over England. Iambic Pentameter was a major player in theater, performance, and the arts, along with several other metric rhythms that were popularly used in vocal and theatrical performances throughout the 15 and 16th centuries.

Remaining the key frustration of many a student studying Shakespeare, iambic pentameter gets taught as Shakespeare's most prominent meter, and we are told it is important. But why is iambic pentameter so historical? Why does it matter to the degree that every major course on Shakespeare considers it essential? With other rhyme schemes available, why did Shakespeare use this one in particular? What makes iambic pentameter so useful for stage performance, and why did Shakespeare choose to "break the iamb" and go with a different meter at key moments within a play?

Here to help us unravel the poetic strands of Shakespeare's history is our guest this week, Susan Dalzell. Susan is the author of Poetry 101: From Shakespeare and Rupi Kaur to Iambic Pentameter and Blank Verse, Everything You Need to Know about Poetry. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, CASE's Currents Magazine, Forbes Travel Guide, Metropolis (Tokyo), and The Columbus Dispatch, among several others. Susan joins us today to explore the history of iambic pentameter, and help us learn exactly why Shakespeare used this particular rhyme scheme in his plays.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected