The Renaissance in England brought with it the exploration of new lands as well as the invention of new technology. For William Shakespeare, the concept of using something as ordinary as a wrist watch was a brand new thought that most people had never seen before. In fact, one of the ways we even know there were wrist watches in Shakespeare’s lifetime comes from a single reference to an “arm watch” given to Queen Elizabeth I by Robert Dudley. For the regular guy on the street or in the theater, in our case, they had a different idea of what it meant to tell time, as the 16th century marked the first time anyone was trying to do it using mechanical clocks. Our guest this week is Wendy Beth Hyman, (professor of/author of} Wendy is an expert on not just how Elizabethans like William Shakespeare kept track of the hours during the day, but on specific mechanisms of those clocks, like jaquemarts, which were part of these newly invented timekeeping devices being created in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Today Wendy is here to share with us a piece of the history of time-keeping as well as to let us in on what a jacquemart is, by using references that we find in Shakespeare’s plays. It turns out that some of the words and phrases Shakespeare uses reveal some of what it was like to live in a time when the creation something ordinary, like a wrist watch or wall clock, was a completely revolutionary idea.

The superstitions surrounding the ideas of ghosts, death, and what happened to your soul as your body approached it’s demise were all inspiring topics for the plays of William Shakespeare. It turns out that these superstitions were not only fuel for dramatic presentations on the stage, but formed the foundation of pretty creepy tales about the real life of one of England’s most famous monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I. 

According to tales from her handmaiden, Elizabeth was paranoid to a fault, scared of dying, and left specific orders in her will for how her body was to be handled that defied the traditions of the land, and left a set of at least 6 individuals doing work that was scarier than grave digger in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Here this week to share with us the real life history of the three weeks after the death of Elizabeth I and the surprising, often macabre, realities of what those weeks entailed by order of the Queen is the man who wrote his PhD thesis on the Living Death of Elizabeth I, Dr. James Alsop. 

In Elizabethan England, one very popular art form was that of the woodcut. This art form is an intricate design, taking great skill and talent to produce, and was a huge innovation in the printing industry for the Renaissance time period. Here today to explain for us how woodcuts were made, where Shakespeare might have seen them in print, and where you and I can explore the ones which survive today is our guest Dr. James Knapp.

A tradition from Shakespeare’s lifetime that continues into the present day is that of the Lord Mayor’s Shows. It is an annual occurrence which exists to introduce the Lord Mayor to the people, the monarch, and London in particular. The way this occasion is marked today, though, is far and away removed from the wild and festive nature of the event when William Shakespeare and his contemporaries were celebrating the day in the early 17th century. The event is so influential on history and society, and indeed the world, that many of our modern conventions and even terminology connected with parades and civic paegents come from the words and celebratory practices that occurred at The Lord Mayor’s Shows. 

Here to walk us through the history of this event and help us get to know what this would be like for Shakespeare is our guest, Samuel Jermy. 

When Queen Elizabeth wanted to punish Robert Devereux for his imprudent behavior at court, she placed him in charge of handling the Irish rebels and sent him off to Ireland with strict instructions on how to handle that situation. His campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, due to reasons that can, and have, filled volumes on the history of the Nine Years War, as well as the Irish Rebellion, but where this elaborate Irish history finds an intriguing connection to Shakespeare is hidden in a seemingly nonsensical line about the death of Irish rats in Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It. In a single line Shakespeare invokes a popular legend about the ability of Irish poetry to kill rats by rhyming them to death. While the bard could simply be referencing the power of words here, we’ve invited an expert on Irish legends, poetry, and Shakespeare, Dr. Kelly Fitgerald, to sit down with us and take us back to 1599 when As You Like It was written, as well as the year Essex was sent to Ireland, and explain what this line implies with its’ suggestion of outright political commentary by Shakespeare, during a time when it was quite dangerous for a playwright write something so pointed.