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.

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.

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.

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.

Mentioned by name in three of Shakespeare’s plays, the legend of Robin Hood played a big role in the life of most dramatists in early modern England, being a prominent figure in English folklore, his legend was a popular source of good dramatic material on stage.

For William Shakespeare, Robin Hood had some very specific touch points, not only was he mentioned by names, but numerous volumes of Shakespeare’s contemporaries were writing and staging plays about Robin Hood, and Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, famously had himself and his court to dress up as Robin Hood and his merry men for a celebration. There were songs and ballads about Robin Hood being sung in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and during the Gunpowder Plot, Robert Cecil even called Guy Fawkes and his associates “Robin Hoods” in 1605.

With the current reputation of Robin Hood as a good folk hero, contrasted with the bad reputation Robert Cecil obviously had of him, I wondered exactly what we as a 21st century audience need to know about 17th century associations with Robin Hood when we encounter the mentions and references to this popular folktale in Shakespeare’s plays.

To help us sort out this mystery and learn more about Shakespeare’s Robin Hood, is our guest Kathryn Roberts Parker.