That Shakespeare Life

Shakespeare mentions kites seven times in his plays, often using the term to reference specific attributes of the bird to describe someone in the story. He'll refer to someone as "a kite" as if that's bad, or other times, he'll use the bird (or 16th century reputation of the bird) to suggest attributes like suspicion: 

Although the kite soar with unbloodiebeak? (Henry VI Part II)

In the late 15th century, the King of Scotland decreed kites should be killed whenever possible, and that perspective on kites contrasted starkly with the later role of this unique bird in England, when kites were protected as an asset to London because they ate the vermin. This protection was short lived, however, and by the Tudor period Kites were again regarded as a nuisance to rural farm communities in England and Scotland. There are even surviving records showing that bounties were paid for the carcasses of red kites, as many people sought their extermination as pests. We can see this negative perspective on kites show up in Shakespeare’s plays, as every reference to kites in the works of William Shakespeare are derogatory. As we explore the role--on stage and in life--of the persistent red kite, our guest this week is Lynn Bowser, co-owner at Argaty Red Kites, which is Central Scotland’s only red kite feeding station.

Biron in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost declares "O my little heart:—

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!"

And in Romeo and Juliet there are stage directions which call for Romeo to

[He climbs the wall, and leaps down within it]

These references have gone largely overlooked by theater companies who perform these plays, being glossed over in dialogue, or constraints of the theater space itself determining what precisely it will look like for Romeo to leap down a wall. Our guest this week, Dawn Tucker, Executive Director of the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival, has done research into the history of leaping, tumbling, and feats of activity on stage in Shakespeare's lifetime and discovered that acrobats were a key part of Elizabethan theater.

Tumblers, as they were called, travelled to England from places like Italy and the records of performance for playing companies like The Queen's Men, show that acrobats were employed in the theaters, and that death defying leaps of acrobatics and performance were a regular part of performances in plays like Hamlet, As You Like It, and even Romeo and Juliet.

I had the pleasure of hearing Dawn speak on this topic of acrobatics in Shakespeare's England at the Blackfriars conference last year, and I am delighted to welcome her to the studio today to share with us what she found inside the Master of the Revels accounts and Chambers archive about Shakespeare's performance history.

Biron in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost declares “O my little heart:—

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!” 

And in Romeo and Juliet there are stage directions which call for Romeo to 

[He climbs the wall, and leaps down within it]

These references have gone largely overlooked by theater companies who perform these plays, being glossed over in dialogue, or constraints of the theater space itself determining what precisely it will look like for Romeo to leap down a wall. Our guest this week, Dawn Tucker, Executive Director of the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival, has done research into the history of leaping, tumbling, and feats of activity on stage in Shakespeare’s lifetime and discovered that acrobats were a key part of Elizabethan theater. 

Tumblers, as they were called, travelled to England from places like Italy and the records of performance for playing companies like The Queen’s Men, show that acrobats were employed in the theaters, and that death defying leaps of acrobatics and performance were a regular part of performances in plays like Hamlet, As You Like It, and even Romeo and Juliet. 

I had the pleasure of hearing Dawn speak on this topic of acrobatics in Shakespeare’s England at the Blackfriars conference last year, and I am delighted to welcome her to the studio today to share with us what she found inside the Master of the Revels accounts and Chambers archive about Shakespeare’s performance history. 

Ben Jonson staged a masque at court called The Fortunate Isles which begins with a spirit descending onto the audience, featuring a floating island so elaborately constructed that England's premiere architectural professional, Inigo Jones, who is the designer behind Whitehall Palace, Banqueting House, and Covent Garden square, was hired to construct an apparatus specifically for this performance. While records do not detail the construction of this magical floating island, we know from various accounts it was impressive in its scope and execution. So, What does this mean about William Shakespeare? We know from Shakespeare's plays that the bard includes very similar items in his plays as well. From magical floating islands and gods riding on dolphins in plays like Twelfth Night to Shakespeare's Cymbeline, where there is a stage direction that almost mirrors what we know happened in Jonson's masque, when the text says "Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle" When these fantastic elements are used in the text, does that mean Shakespeare could have had an architectural designer build an elaborate floating island, or a descending eagle befitted with thunder and lighting inside The Globe theater?Traditional theater research into Elizabethan staging suggests that the set and scenery for this play would have been so sparse that the production relied on the strength of the dialogue to convey the elaborate and fantastic parts of the story, but if that is the case, why did Shakespeare map out Jupiter's descent in the stage directions with such precision? Could Shakespeare have used elaborate props and circus-like movable scenery? Our guest, Dr. Michael Hirrel believes, the answer is yes.

Ben Jonson staged a masque at court called The Fortunate Isles which begins with a spirit descending onto the audience, featuring a floating island so elaborately constructed that England’s premiere architectural professional, Inigo Jones, who is the designer behind Whitehall Palace, Banqueting House, and Covent Garden square, was hired to construct an apparatus specifically for this performance. While records do not detail the construction of this magical floating island, we know from various accounts it was impressive in its scope and execution. So, What does this mean about William Shakespeare? We know from Shakespeare’s plays that the bard includes very similar items in his plays as well. From magical floating islands and gods riding on dolphins in plays like Twelfth Night to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, where there is a stage direction that almost mirrors what we know happened in Jonson’s masque, when the text says “Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle” When these fantastic elements are used in the text, does that mean Shakespeare could have had an architectural designer build an elaborate floating island, or a descending eagle befitted with thunder and lighting inside The Globe theater?

Traditional theater research into Elizabethan staging suggests that the set and scenery for this play would have been so sparse that the production relied on the strength of the dialogue to convey the elaborate and fantastic parts of the story, but if that is the case, why did Shakespeare map out Jupiter’s descent in the stage directions with such precision? Could Shakespeare have used elaborate props and circus-like movable scenery? Our guest, Dr. Michael Hirrel believes, the answer is yes.

Modern productions of plays include all manner of music, accompaniment, and we almost consider an orchestra pit to be synonymous with theater today. For William Shakespeare, however, his plays were performed in a variety of locations, all of which were void of any orchestra pit but we do know that Shakespeare's plays included music with works like Hamlet calling for Ophelia to sing a song, but also flourishes to signal entrances as well as exits, along with popular ballads and even a few songs we believe Shakespeare wrote himself.

Our guest this week, Catherine Loomis, is here to help us explore the role of music in early modern theater, and the songs that survive from Shakespeare's lifetime.

Catherine Loomis has taught at the University of New Orleans and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and currently teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (2010) and the editor of William Shakespeare: A Documentary Volume (2005) and Shaping Shakespeare for Performance: The Bear Stage (2015) as well as essays on Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, and theater history. She has lectured on Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth at the Folger Institute in Washington, DC, and at several universities. She is currently working on a collection of early modern poems and prose works in which male authors adopt a female narrative voice.

Modern productions of plays include all manner of music, accompaniment, and we almost consider an orchestra pit to be synonymous with theater today. For William Shakespeare, however, his plays were performed in a variety of locations, all of which were void of any orchestra pit but we do know that Shakespeare’s plays included music with works like Hamlet calling for Ophelia to sing a song, but also flourishes to signal entrances as well as exits, along with popular ballads and even a few songs we believe Shakespeare wrote himself. 

Our guest this week, Catherine Loomis, is here to help us explore the role of music in early modern theater, and the songs that survive from Shakespeare’s lifetime.

Catherine Loomis has taught at the University of New Orleans and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and currently teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (2010) and the editor of William Shakespeare: A Documentary Volume (2005) and Shaping Shakespeare for Performance: The Bear Stage (2015) as well as essays on Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, and theater history. She has lectured on Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth at the Folger Institute in Washington, DC, and at several universities. She is currently working on a collection of early modern poems and prose works in which male authors adopt a female narrative voice.

Along the North shore of England lies the Holderness Coast. Over 500 years ago a small town on this coast, named Ravenspurre, went down under the sea and into history as the spot where Henry IV rallied his troops on his way to dethrone Richard II. It is a story repeated by William Shakespeare in his versions of this historical rebellion, with Ravenspurre appearing as "Ravenspurgh" spelled with a gh on the end, in Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, and Henry VI Part 3. Recent research into the exact location of Ravenspurre, and the last spot it was known to be before coastal erosion swallowed the town into the ocean, reveals new information about where Henry IV first landed on his way to defeat Richard II, and shines a historical light on the legendary location of Ravenspurre.Our guest this week is Dr. Robin Bates, who recently presented on her research investigating the location of Ravenspurre and its relation to Shakespeare's Richard II, for a presentation at the Blackfriars Conference in Staunton, VA.

No one asks a question better than William Shakespeare. When we explore his plays, they are full of question marks but it turns out that for the 16th century, the concept of what constituted a question was still a new thing for printers who were in charge of selecting the actual marks which would go on the page to indicate a question. Not to mention, since Shakespeare's plays were written on paper originally, or recounted in letters, often times the text that printers were working with to compile works like the First Folio required the printers to interpret pretty hard to read Elizabethan handwriting. That resulted in what is known as punctuation variations, and as our guest this week presented at the recent Blackfriars Conference, there were even some writers who suggested there be brand new kinds for question marks all together. Our guest, James Loehlin, is here this week to take us back to Shakespeare's England and explore how we know when Shakespeare was actually intending to ask a question.