The History Of European Theatre

Episode 214:

For today’s guest episode I was pleased to get the chance to talk to Rob Eastaway, author of a book all about Shakespeare and his relationship to numbers and mathematics. Rob’s book ‘Much Ado About Numbers’ is a very entertaining read, whatever your level of understanding maths might be and quite an eye opener when considering how much maths permeates into Shakespeare’s plays. This is not just about hard numbers and number crunching, but touches to the Elizabethan attitude towards descriptive scales, astrology, astronomy, music and optics. Rob does a great job in the book of condensing these very broad and often technical subjects into a book that is a mixture of popular science, mathematics, history and, of course, literature, so it was great to chat to Rob about just some of those concepts.

Rob Eastaway is author of several bestselling books connecting maths with everyday life, including "Why do Buses Come in Threes?" and "How Many Socks Make a Pair?". His first book "What is a googly?", an introduction to cricket, was famously presented by British Prime Minister John Major to President Bush (snr) at Camp David in 1992, and was published in the USA under the title "Cricket Explained".

With Mike Askew, he wrote "Maths for Mums & Dads", a book that helps parents to understand the new methods being used to teach maths, and offers ideas for how to make maths more engaging and fun at home. An American edition was published in 2010 entitled "Old Dogs, New Math". Rob appears regularly on radio in the UK and is a regular speaker. An activity that has taken him to the Usa and Australia. He was President of the Mathematical Association from 2007-8.

Links to 'Much Ado About Numbers:

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Much-Ado-About-Numbers-Eastaway/dp/1805460293/ref=sr_1_1?

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Much-Ado-About-Numbers-Shakespeares/dp/B0CWD3SNXP/ref=sr_1_1?

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Episode 213:

In the spring of 1606, a new Ben Jonson play premiered, not on this occasion at the Blackfriars theatre performed by one of the child companies, but at the Globe and performed by the King’s Men.  The reasons for why Jonson sold his play to the King’s Men are not completely clear.  Having a play performed by the Kings Men was, of course, prestigious in itself, and some of his early plays had been performed by the Lord Chamberlin’s Men, but up to this point for his most recent plays Johnson had seemed to prefer using the child companies.  It may be that the Children of the Queens Revels were wary of another Jonson play after the problems that ‘Eastward Ho’ had caused for the playwrights, or perhaps Johnson himself felt it would be wise to distance himself from that association and switching to the adult company was a way of doing that. Perhaps Jonson had seen the writing on the wall for the Children of the Queens Revels after they had got into trouble for a production of a play by John Day called ‘The Isle of Gulls’.  

The dating and first performance of the play

The slow demise of the Children of the Queen’s Revels

Early performances of the play

A brief synopsis of the play

The prologue and the argument

The city comedy elements in the play

What the setting of the play meant to the English audience

The methods by which Jonson created the Venetian setting

The purpose of the subplot featuring three English tourists

The beast fable elements in the play

Deception and the influence of the gunpowder plot on the play

The satire of greed as the driving theme of the play

Class conflict in the play and it’s moralistic ending

The later performance history of the play

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Episode 212:

For today’s guest episode it is a warm welcome back to the podcast for Darren Freebury Jones.  On this occasion Darren is here to discuss Thomas Kyd and the works that have been attributed to him in a new two-volume edition of his collected works, for which Darren is the associate editor.  It is always a pleasure to talk to Darren and as a friend of the podcast he needs only the briefest of introductions:

Dr Darren Freebury-Jones is author of several works on early modern theatre including: 

‘Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival’, ‘Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd’ and his latest work ‘Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers’, has now just been published in a paperback edition.

In addition to these works and his role as Associate Editor for the first critical edition of The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd since 1901 he has also investigated the boundaries of John Marston’s dramatic corpus as part of the Oxford Marston project and is General Editor for ‘The Collected Plays of Robert Greene’ published by Edinburgh University Press.  His findings on the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries have been discussed in national newspapers in the UK and on BBC Radio.  His debut poetry collection, ‘Rambling’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2024.  In 2023 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of his contributions to historical scholarship. 

Links to 'The Collected Thomas Kyd' and 'Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers'

https://boydellandbrewer.com/book/the-collected-works-of-thomas-kyd-2-volume-set-9781843846994/?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Borrowed-Feathers-Playwrights-Greatest/dp/152617734X/ref=sr_1_1?

https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-borrowed-feathers-playwrights-greatest/dp/152617734X/ref=sr_1_1?

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526177346/

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Episode 211:

Through the last few episodes on Shakespeare’s plays, we seem to have seen a playwright in a serious mood, even when he was writing comedies. ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Measure For Measure’ are often referred to as having an autumnal tone, something serious underlying the comedy and of course we also have the even darker worlds of the tragedies of ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Othello’.  The next play we come to from Shakespeare fits well into this group, but I choose my words carefully there because I can’t say for sure that ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ was his ‘next’ play after ‘Measure For Measure’ as the dating of this comedy is difficult.

The dating of the play

The sources for the play

A brief summary of the plot

How Shakespeare subverts the original folk tale into a comedy

Irony in the play

The two sides of the character of Helen

What does Helen see in Bertram?

The role reversal between Helen and Bertram

The character of Bertram

The bed trick

The character of Parolas

Some examples of criticism of the play

The performance history of the play

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Episode 210:

In her new book ‘What’s in a name? How historians know Shakespeare was Shakespeare’ Susan Ammunsen sets out to show how that in early modern England it was entirely possible that a glover’s son could transform into a successful actor and playwright.  She does so by detailing a society that was in a moment of flux and opportunity in many aspects of life.  It is a compelling read, so I was very pleased to invite Susan onto the podcast to discuss her work.

Susan D. Amussen is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Merced, whose work focuses on the intersections of gender and other structures of power in early modern England and its empire. She is author of numerous books and articles, including ‘Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society’; ‘Turning the World Upside Down’ and, with David Underdown, ‘Gender, Culture and Politics in Early Modern England’ ‘What’s in a name’ was published on March 24th, 2026, by Manchester University Press.

I spoke to Susan over a Zoom call from her home in California

Manchester University Press: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526191908/

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Name-Historians-Know-Shakespeare/dp/1526191903/ref=sr_1_2?

Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-name-historians-know-Shakespeare/dp/1526191903/ref=sr_1_3?

Support the podcast at:

www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.com

www.patreon.com/thoetp

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Episode 209: 

After the failure of ‘Sejanus His Fall’ Jonson’s next play was a collaboration with John Marston and George Chapman, a new play for the Blackfriars’s theatre and it’s resident company of boy actors.  Jonson maybe needed the collaboration to restore his confidence in his writing, although from what we know of his character perhaps more likely it was the hope of a decent payday that spurred him on.  Returning to comedy must have been part of the attraction.  Whatever the case the three playwrights managed to produce a comedy that was funny, thoughtful, moralistic and yet still controversial.  The exact reasons for that controversy and the strength of reaction to the play from king James is now obscure to us, but at the time nearly cost the playwrights not only their liberty, but their ears as well.

The three authors of the play – who wrote what?

The first performance and printing of the play

A synopsis of the plot

The play as a response to ‘Westward Ho!’

The Prologue

The comparison of good and bad work ethics

The child acting companies and how their plays were received

Combining three types of play on ‘Eastward Ho’

The city comedy

The citizen comedy

The morality tale

Three journeys in the play

            The voyage to Virginia

            Gertrude’s journey

            Golding’s rise in the city

Reference to the Roanoke settlement and the view of the New World

The fate of the adventurers after the shipwreck

The influence of the city of London and alchemy

The pairing of characters for dramatic effect

The theatrical nature of the play and Quicksilver’s redemption

The consequences of the play for the playwrights

The later performance history of the play

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Episode 207:

It was just about this time last year I talked to Roberta Barker about her work on the boy actors of the Elizabethan period and she mentioned at the time that she was then working on a new edition of ‘Measure for Measure’ for Cambridge University Press and I’m pleased to say that she agreed to carve some time out of her busy schedule to discuss the play with us today.  Having been immersed in the play for a long time there is no one better placed at the moment than Roberta to discuss the play so I was particularly pleased when she agreed to come back onto the podcast at this point.

Roberta Barker is a member of the Joint Faculty of King’s College, London, where she is Professor of Theatre teaching in the Foundation Year and Early Modern Studies programs, and Dalhousie University, Halifax Nova Scotia, where she teaches Theatre in the Fountain School of Performing Arts. Her research interests centre upon the relationship between performance and the social construction of identity and has explored such topics as the representation of gender and class in early modern tragedy, the early modern careers and modern afterlives of Shakespeare’s boy players, and the role played by the performance of illness on the nineteenth-century stage in the evolution of realist style.  She is also a theatre and opera director.

Support the podcast at:

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Hello everyone

I’m interrupting your day for a small announcement about the podcast.  If you have listened to any episodes recently you will have noticed that advertisements are now playing at the start, middle and end each episode.  Placing advertisements in the podcast is a way of helping to recoup the costs of putting the podcast out for free, which is why I took the plunge and decided to go down this path.  For those of you who support the podcast on Patreon on either of the paid levels of membership from next Monday’s episode I will be adding all new episodes without adverts to your Patreon feed, so that you can listen to them there.  The episode that comes out on a Monday morning UK time will be released on Patreon on the Sunday before.  For those of you on the top tier membership on Patreon these episodes will come on the same feed from which you currently get the extra episodes, so no need for you to make any changes.

If you are currently not a supporter on Patreon and you like the uninterrupted podcast experience, then now would be a great time to join us there and it will only cost you £1 a month.  If you want to investigate that, or joining at the higher membership level and receiving two additional theatre related audio podcasts a month for an even deeper dive into theatre history then follow the link in the show notes or just go to patreon.com and search for ‘the history of European theatre’.

A bit thank-you to everyone who already supports the podcast on Patreon and also thanks to all of you who listen every week as we make our way through the long history of theatre.

As ever if you want to contact me about this change, or anything to do with the podcast you can reach me by email at [email protected], or through the website where you can leave me a voice message by clicking on the microphone icon or you can write to me on the contact page.  That’s all at www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.com

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Episode 207 

Whereas the larger-than-life characters in ‘Othello’ left us with no moral ambiguities, but plenty of questions about the nature of the outsider and society’s attitude towards those who are different.  Shakespeare’s next offering, ‘Measure for Measure’ was a very different piece with few of those certainties.

The dating and earliest performance of the play

The early print history of the play

Changes made by Thomas Middleton

The source material for the play

A brief synopsis of the play

Comedy of Tragicomedy?

Issues with the structure of the play

Justice and mercy

The premise of the play examined

How the characters avoid easy categorisation

The role of the duke

The role of Isabella

The role of Angelo

The role of Lucio

The ending of the play and Isabella’s response to the duke

The mixed critical response to the play

The later performance history of the play

Measure for Measure on film

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Episode 206

Last time I discussed the dating and sources for Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Othello’, the early performance history, and some points about the structure and poetry in the play.  Then I took you through the first part of the play, up to the point where Iago had managed to sow seeds of doubt into Othello’s mind about the constancy of women and get his professional rival Michael Cassio so drunk and fired up that he got involved in a brawl with the town governor and is demoted.  In doing so I looked at the characters of Iago, Brabantio and Cassio, so on this occasion listening to that episode is essential before starting on this one.  If you need to do that as soon as you are back, I will be picking up from exactly where I left off last time.

The character and expected role of Emelia

The relationship of Emelia and Desdemona

The character of Bianca and the Venetian courtesan

How Bianca contrasts with Desdemona

Conflicting views of the character of Desdemona

The character of Othello

The play as a tragedy of Greek proportions

The disintegration of Othello from strong leader to murderer

Othello as a social disruptor

The ‘noble savage’ Vs the veneer of sophistication

The role of resentment and honour in the play

Later performances of the play

Some very selected criticism of the play

Support the podcast at:

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