That Shakespeare Life

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 communicated varying emotion and called attention to important sections of a play or story that needed to be given more oomph. Our guest this week, Florence Hazrat, has completed the book "An Admirable Point: a Brief History of the Exclamation Point" and joins us today to share some of the history of where this bit of English grammar originated and how it was being used in Shakespeare's lifetime.

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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's Guide to Elizabethan England, Ian Mortimer, to the show today.

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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 scenes on stage for this production, and he joins us today to talk with us about how Shakespeare would have staged these battle scenes in the 16th century and how it works to stay true to history when staging these plays today.

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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, Strangers' wasn't built or established for the Strangers arriving in 1565 but was used by them as an available property. Only one known family lived in the Hall from 1567. The letter written by the family lodging at Strangers refers to it as Master Sotherton's property in the High Street. The hall is a museum today that and we are delighted to welcomemuseum's assistant curator of social history, Bethan Holdrige, to the show today to tell us about the history of Stranger's Hall and the impact of the influx of refugees to the area during Shakespeare's lifetime.

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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 region. One of England's most famous privateers, Sir Walter Raleigh, with the blessing of Queen Elizabeth, sent a reconnaissance expedition to the New World in April, 1584, they arrived in present day North Carolina in July of 1584, and would go on to establish the first English colony in the united States, Roanoke Colony, in 1587. At this site today, Fort Raleigh, named after Sir Walter Raleigh, preserved the history of Roanoke Colony and National Park Guide Josh Nelson joins us to today to tell us about the Elizabethan history of Raleigh, North Carolina, and to share some of the archaeological finds still there today that you can see from Shakespeare's lifetime.

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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. If you have heard about the printing of the first Folio then you'll probably recognize the names Heminges and Condell, Shakespeare's friends and colleagues, who are often regarded as the authors of the First Folio. What the history shows us, however is that the making of First Folio was not done solely by two men, but instead was a collective work done by a large network of individuals that were friends, and fans of Shakespeare, as well as business men looking to capitalize on an opportunity. Our guest this week, Chris Laoutaris, has done in-depth investigative research into the history behind the making of the First Folio, that he shares in his latest book titled Shakespeare's Book, that's out now. We're delighted to have Chris here today to discuss his book and to reveal a fresh perspective and some new discoveries about the people and the history that gave us the First Folio.

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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 About Nothing and the Henry plays, women's clothing and specifically their scandalous undergarments, are mentioned, too, when Shakespeare writes about a pair of bodies, hose and sleeve, and a farthingale. 16th century English men and women had underclothing designed to deal with the practical realities of using the restroom, avoiding body odor, supportive garments like bras & menstrual pads, and there's even record of 16-17th century lingerie. Here today to walk us through the history of undergarments for men and women in Shakespeare's lifetime as well as night clothes, and specialty styles of practical linen for Shakespeare's lifetime is our guest and clothing historian, Sarah Bendall.

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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 would have been, and how organizations like Bedlam Hopsital for the insane fit into this understanding, we are sitting down today with Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of Richard III's Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History to examine how uderstanding 16th century medical history helps characters like Richard III make more sense.

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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 Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531) was teaching in the 1520s what would later become known as "the covenant of redemption" A few years later Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75) published the first Protestant book devoted to explaining the covenant of grace, and of course there's John Calvin, who died the year Shakespeare was born, writing about the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. All of these concepts heavily influenced not only the Church of England, but also The Kirk, the Church of Scotland in defining what it meant to be Protestant. In 1560, The Scottish Parliament designated the kirk as the sole form of religion in Scotland, and adopted the Scots Confession, rejecting Catholic teachings and practices. James VI argued the king was also head of the church, governing through bishops appointed by himself, and in 1603 when he became King of England, he also became head of the Church of England. Eventually Scotland would adopt what's known as the National Covenant, springing from different perspectives on who held ultimate authority over the church, and this National covenant incorporated the text of another famous covenant that was drafted when Shakespeare was just 17 years old, known as the Negative Confession (1581). Its authors used pieces from the sixteenth-century covenant ideas involving familiar actions and assigned gestures as part of the ritual of what it meant to take a covenant. Our guest this week is an expert on the history of 16th century covenanting and we are delighted to welcome Neil McIntyre to the show to help us unpack the religious history that was finding its' feet during Shakespeare's lifetime, as well as to help us understand what Shakespeare would have been referring to or what his audience would have expected to see when they heard and saw the ideas of covenanting appearing in plays like Henry VI and Cymbeline.

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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 Huguenots rounded up and slaughtered. That was only one event where Huguenots were proven unwelcome, and in danger, to remain in France. Throughout the reigns of Edward VI, Elizabeth I, and on into the 18th century reigns of James II, and beyond, England as a Protestant nation became a safe haven for refugee French Calvinists. During Shakespeare's lifetime, the impact of the arrival of Huguenots seems to have been significant, with Shakespeare writing about "strangers" over 70 times across his works, often using the term to describe someone from another country, who may not speak English, and is simultaneously in need of a welcome, and to be viewed with necessary suspicion. We see plays like Hamlet extending a hand of friendship when Hamlet says in Act I "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome." And yet, in Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, Rosaline being much less accomodating, saying, "Since you are strangers and come here by chance, We'll not be nice" While these references could refer to any international Immigrant, many believe that Shakespeare commented directly on the plight of the Huguenots from France, with one impassioned speech about how to treat so called Strangers, that is given in the historical play Sir Thomas More. Furthermore, we know that William Shakespeare had direct personal connections to Huguenots, having lived for a time as a lodger in London with Christopher and Mary Mountjoy, a French Huguenot couple. Here today to tell us more about the plight of refugee French Calvinists in the life of William Shakespeare is our guest and Fellow of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Joyce Hampton.

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