That Shakespeare Life

John Taylor is a poet contemporary to Shakespeare, but with a decidedly unique approach to the writing profession. John Taylor trained professionally as a waterman, or a river worker who taxied passengers to and from city destinations on the rivers like the River Thames in London. John Taylor used his occupation as a waterman to talk with the various playwrights, actors, and patrons while they were on the boat with him between destinations. Over the years, John Taylor used what he learned from these conversations to craft himself into a poet with the purpose of re-inventing the unglamorous and ridiculed 16th century opinion of the profession of waterman into a more glorified occupation by naming himself The Water Poet. Taylor's work did manage to earn him a position of leadership in a waterman's guild, and he would write elegies for not only James I, but John Taylor was the first person to write about the death of William Shakespeare, when he wrote a poem mentioning the bard in 1620. Here today to tell us about the life and exploits of this unique character from the life of William Shakespeare is our guest, Bernard Capp.

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Shakespeare's plays mention several kinds of alcoholic beverages, some of which we still have today like wine, ale, and beer, but others are more firmly situated in the past, making them pretty obscure references outside of niche historical circles that enjoy recreating beverages from antiquity. For example, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VI, and Twelfth Night give us mentions of drinks like sack, posset, canary, and metheglin, all of which are alcoholic drinks but their substance may not be as recognizable today as it was for Shakespeare. What were these drinks made from, were they served at pubs or around the family diner table, and what did they look like?

Our guests this week, Jared and Anistatia Brown are experts in historical beverages and the owners at sipsmith.com where they research and write about the history of alcoholic drinks.

Today, Jared and Anastatia are taking us back to the 16th century to investigate these obscure drinks and introduce us to the cocktails of Shakespeare's lifetime.

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In a 16th century painting by Casper Stromayr, two men, presumably doctors, are standing behind a table on which a set of surgical instruments are laid out very neatly. In the notes for the painting we discover that some of the instruments are specifically for surgery of the eye.

Cataract surgery like the one being prepared for in this painting was just becoming widespread in Shakespeare's lifetime and was performed to remove the pearly film that developed over the surface of the eye.

In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Ferdinand uses the phrase "Those are pearls that were his eyes:" Again in Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare calls attention to pearly eyes when he writes "His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds; Those round clear pearls of his…"

Additionally, in both King Lear and Shakespeare's Henry VI Part II, there are references in the dialogue to specific procedures and even specific diseases of the eye. The novelty of this new surgery, combined with the very public and performative nature of the procedure itself– often being performed in the street on public display– it's plausible to think William Shakespeare may have been studying up on this new science. Based on the parallels found in Shakespeares plays, some scholars even suggest that William Shakespeare may have read Charles Estienne's Defence of Contraries, translated from French to English in 1593, or Thomas Cooper's 1578 medical dictionary that defines "cataractia" as "a disease of the eyes, when a tough humour like a gelly droppeth out."

To help us explore the history of cataract surgery as well as the references to the procedure and eye disease we see in Shakespeare's plays is our guest and professional ophthalmologist, Dr. Chris Lefflfer.

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In the 16th century plague impacted Shakespeare's daily life through regular closings of the theater due to the fear of disease spreading in enclosed spaces. In addition to large crowds gathering together in the theater, contemporary science warned against one particular threat of contagion: the laundry. It was believed that certain materials could spread disease by their relationship to the body. For example, linen was thought to be protective against disease by wicking the sweat and body odor away from the wearer. While linen was protective, other fabrics were deemed more dangerous while washing techniques, including using soaps like lye- a highly caustic cleanser made from wood ash, could help prevent disease. Our guest this week, Stephanie Bennett, is the author of "Cloth, Contact, and Contagion: Touching Disease of the Past and Present" for the Social History Society. Stephanie joins us today to talk about the 16th century understanding of disease and how proximity, material, and the interactions between the skin and clothing were thought to prevent or transmit disease.

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Throughout Shakespeare's lifetime there were dozens of books printed on plants called herballs. These books contained drawings of various grasses, flowers, herbs, and trees that grew in England. The drawings we have surviving today total more than 1,000 woodcuts from Shakespeare's lifetime literally illustrating for us that the plant industry in England was big business for the same publishing houses producing Shakespeare's plays. Our guest this week, Sarah Neville, joins us to explore this part of the publishing industry and explain where herballs came from, who wrote them, and most of all, what kind of person wanted to buy them during Shakespeare's lifetime.

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In Shakespeare's Pericles, the character Thasia gives birth on a ship at sea and, dying in childbirth, is thrown overboard in her coffin by Pericles. There's a great deal to unpack in the story about this moment, but seeing it happen in the play lead me to wonder: Were women really traveling on board ships in the 16th century (sailing and exploration being typically a male profession, and even when the Pilgrims sailed to the New World, the Mayflower was unique in allowing both women and children aboard.) To help us understand what the place of women on ships was in the 16th C, whether there were any standards of care offered, and how births like Thasia's might have been handled off stage and in the real 16th century world in which Shakespeare was living is our guest, Kasia Burzyńska

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One of the byproducts of introducing disruptive innovation to the theater industry of the 16th century is that not everyone is a fan of your work. For William Shakespeare, as he and his compatriots masterminded theaters like the Globe and the Blackfriars, there was a considerable faction of Puritans in London who felt their work was corrupting the city and sought fervently to stop it. Our guest this week, Chris Laoutaris, is the author of Shakespeare and the Countess, the book that tells the remarkable story of how one woman in particular put up a memorable fight to try and stop one of the greatest theaters in history.

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Many of Shakespeare's most powerful scenes are based on physical action that isn't directly written about in the scripts of his works. For example, when Ophelia goes mad and demonstrates her madness on stage, we know for certain what she says during that scene because her lines are written out for us but it's unclear what her physical movements should be on stage. Similarly, in fight scenes, like brawls, riots, or acts of domestic abuse that happens within Shakespeare's plays, it is up to interpretation of the director as to how the actors would have performed. Our guests this week, Jared Kirby and Seth Duerr, have decided to take some of the guesswork out of these scenes by investigating the history of fights, physical violence, and stage performance to determine what kind of actions should accompany the fights, assaults, struggles, and foul play in Shakespeare's plays.

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Born in the late 1480s, and dying an astonishing one hundred and fifty two years later in 1635, Old Tom Parr is famous for living longer than any man in England before or since his lifetime. Overlapping Shakespeare's lifetime entirely, being born before the bard and living more than twenty years after the bard's death, Old Tom Parr was born in Alderbury, England, and lived in Shropshire, where still today there is a small cottage called Old Parr's Cottage that you can visit today. The cottage's preservation and that of Old Tom Parr's memory is a testament to this man's extraordinarily long life. His longevity has been attributed to a unique diet, and specifically enjoying what one 16th Century physician called a "care free" life. To put the length of his life into perspective, Old Tom Parr would have lived through both the Battle of Bosworth, and Shakespeare's retelling of it on the early modern stage over 100 years later. A portrait of Old Tom Parr hangs in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, and one of the curators there, Emma Kate Lanyon, joins us today to share the history of this portrait, as well as details into the surprising life, and death, of the longest living man from Shakespeare's lifetime: the real Old Tom Parr

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Shakespeare references "beer" in his works 6 times, drawing attention to specific kinds of beer like "small beer" "double beer" and even one reference in Hamlet to beer barrels where the Prince of Denmark suggests that beer barrels had a stopper to keep them sealed. Drinking beer in Shakespeare's lifetime was almost as regular as drinking water is today. So whenever you were thirsty, drinks like ale, beer, and spirits were much safer. This beer drinking reality means that there was a strong economy for beer making and distilling in Elizabethan England, including unique storage methods, containers, and even some versions of beer like small and double beer that are obsolete today. To find out exactly what the state, varieties, and industry was behind beer for Shakespeare, we have invited our guest this week, Richard Unger, expert in the beer making of Elizabethan England, and author of the book "Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance" to help us explore the history of how beer was made for the life of William Shakespeare.

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