The History Of European Theatre

Episode 166:

As with 'Richard II' 'Henry IV part 1' handles some complex English history as it examines the relationships between the King, his son and the powerful Percy family.  After the deposition of Richard II Henry ruled for fourteen years until his death. Having ended 'Richard II' with Henry’s accession to the throne and Richard’s death in prison Shakespeare opens this play just a few years later, but with a vision of a tired king and a country dissatisfied with his rule.  

The setting for the play

A brief synopsis of the play

The dating of the play

The early performance history of the play

The publication history of the play

The sources for the play

The balance of history and comedy

The historical accuracy of the play

The play as an examination of the father/son relationship

The character of Hotspur as a medieval knight

The portrayal of Glendower as a mystic leader

The role of the aristocratic ladies

Prince Hal as a new sort of leader

Falstaff, ruler of his own sort of court and a king of everyman

The historical figure of Sir John Oldcastle

The later performance history of the play

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Episode 165

In today’s guest episode it is a very welcome return to the podcast for Darren Freebury-Jones.  Darren appeared previously to discuss his book ‘Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers’ and I asked him back on this occasion because his earlier book ‘Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd’ is now published in a paperback edition by Manchester University Press, making it a much more accessible resource for any enthusiast of early modern theatre.  In our conversation about the book Darren mentions a few points, like the detail of verse structure and characters like Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe that we discussed in more detail in our earlier encounter.  If you would like to listen to that again it is still out there on the podcast feed as episode 126, that’s season six episode thirteen.

Dr Darren Freebury-Jones is author of the monographs: Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival, Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd, and Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers.  He is also Associate Editor for the first critical edition of The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd since 1901.  He has 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, also published by Edinburgh University Press. His findings on the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries have been discussed in national newspapers such as The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Observer, and The Independent as well as 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.

Amazon UK link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Tutor-Influence-Thomas-Kyd/dp/1526182610/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

Amazon US Link: https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-tutor-influence-Thomas-Kyd/dp/1526182610/ref=sr_1_1?

Manchester Universty Press link: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182616/

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Episode 164

Fate, as in Romeo and Juliet, plays a large part in ‘The Merchant of Venice’, as do deep seated grudges, but these are more societal than familial.  We are still in Italy, but no longer in close knit Verona, but mercantile and outward looking Venice.  As Shakespeare wrote this play London was becoming orientated around increasing global trade and English trading ships were regularly making their way to Venice as a major trading hub, so perhaps it is no surprise that Venice, with its eyes on commerce and profit, was a suitably exotic setting for this tale of greed, love and a clash of cultures. 

The dating of the play

The printed history of the play

The sources of the play including earlier theatrical ‘Jew’ plays

A brief outline of the plot

The different views of the character of Shylock – stereotype or sympathetic

The Jewish experience in Elizabethan London

The comic elements of the play

The character of Antonio

Portia’s role in the play

Portia’s ‘mercy’ speech

The performance history of the play 

Support the podcast at:

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Episode 163

My background reading while preparing the episode on Romeo and Juliet took me to many stories about and thoughts on the afterlife of the play and its continuing influence on western culture, what follows is just a few stories and thoughts that illustrate that continuing influence.

Verona and Juliet’s Statue

Juliet’s tomb

Cibber’s Juliet

Franco Zeffirelli’s film for the ‘love generation’

West Side Story

Support the podcast at:

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Episode 162

In today’s episode I look at Shakespeare’s early tragedy and one of his enduringly popular plays ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

The dating of the play

The early printings of the play in quarto editions

The origins of the story and Shakespeare’s direct sources

The opening chorus

Violence and the hand of fate underlying the action

The opening brawl and the threat of violence to women

The calming voice of women in the play

Romeo as a Petrarchan hero

Juliet as an innovative character who drives the plot

Romeo and Juliet’s shared sonnet

The motivations of Friar Lawrence and Juliet’s nurse

A brief performance history of the play

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Episode 161

In today’s guest episode I will be discussing Shakespeare’s characterisations of the lower classes and looking at the role they play with Stephen Unwin, who’s book ‘Poor Naked Wretches’ explores the variety of working people in Shakespeare's plays as well as a vast range of cultural sources from which they were drawn and argues that the robust realism of these characters makes them so much more than mere Comic Relief. 

Stephen Unwin is an award-winning British theatre and opera director.  He has directed almost 100 professional productions and worked with many well-established actors and singers, as well as developing the careers of many younger ones.  He studied at the University of Cambridge.

In the 1980s Stephen worked at the Almeida Theatre, London, the Traverse in Edinburgh, in repertoire theatre and at the National Theatre Studio.  In 1993, he founded English Touring Theatre, for whom he directed more than 30 productions of classical and new plays, many of which transferred to London.  In 2008, he became Artistic Director of the new Rose Theatre in Kingston, which he ran until January 2014.  He has worked extensively at the Theatre Royal Bath and has directed more than 20 operas.  Ten of his productions have been seen in the West End.

Stephen has taught in conservatoires and universities in Britain and America and written 10 books on theatre and drama, including ‘Poor Naked Wretches’. He has also written five original plays: ‘All Our Children’ was premiered at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2017 and staged in New York in 2019, and ‘Laughing Boy’ opened at Jermyn Street in 2024 and also played at the Theatre Royal Bath. 

Stephen is a campaigner for the rights and dignities of learning-disabled people and ‘Beautiful Lives: How We Got Learning Disabilities So Wrong’, is published by Wildfire Book in June 2025.

This is only a shortened version of Stephen’s achievements and I would encourage you to visit his website for much more information.  

You can find him at www.stephenunwin.uk 

https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/poor-naked-wretches

Support the podcast at:

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Episode 160

A synopsis of the play

The sources and dating of the play

The problems with a historical drama in verse

The historical accuracy of the play

King John as neither a hero nor anti-hero

Philip the bastard as a central character in the play

The theme of self-identity and changing fortune in the play

Blanche as a representation of innocence manipulated

Queen Eleanor as the power behind the throne

Constance in grief and, maybe, madness, but eloquent

Movement towards the personal in the second half of the play

The confusion over the character of Hubert

The fate of the king as a metaphor for England

The performance history of the play

Link to the silent film from 1899 of the death of king John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lWn99STB1o

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Episode 159

For today’s guest episode we are going back to the Italian renaissance theatre and the world of the Commedia Dell’arte.  You will remember that I covered the Commedia and other early Italian theatre in season five of the podcast, but in this conversation with Serena Laiena we have much more detail about a particular theatrical couple and the world of 16thcentury Italian theatre.  In her book ‘The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy: Self-Fashioning and Mutual Marketing’ Serena looks at the birth of a phenomenon, that of the couple in show business where she focuses on the mutually beneficial promotional strategies devised by two professional performers and husband and wife team, Giovan Battista Andreini and Virginia Ramponi.

Serena Laiena is Assistant Professor in Italian and Ad Astra Fellow at University College Dublin. Her research focuses on early modern Italian theatre, especially commedia dell’arte. Most of her time is devoted to the understanding of the social and cultural role of the first professional actresses in modern history.  The award-winning monograph that is the basis of our discussion today was published in 2023 by the University of Delaware Press.  Currently, she is working on a book-length project focusing on the correspondence by and about professional actresses to bring to light the managing roles they performed within theatre companies.

For more details on Serena's book:

UK link to Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Theatre-Couple-Early-Modern-Italy-ebook/dp/B0C9F9T6RX/ref=sr_1_1?

US link to Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Theatre-Couple-Early-Modern-Italy/dp/1644533154/ref=sr_1_1?

Link to publisher's website: https://udpress.udel.edu/book-title/the-theatre-couple-in-early-modern-italy-self-fashioning-and-mutual-marketing/

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Episode 158

Picking up the journey through Shakespeare's plays with 'Richard II'

A brief summary of the play

The early performance history of the play

The early print history of the play

The variations in the quarto editions concerning the deposition scene

The sources for the play

The role of the play in the Essex rebellion

The historical accuracy of the play

The dramatic arcs travelled by Richard and Bolingbroke

The political represented in the personal through the female roles

The significant role of minor characters

How verse is used in the play to distinguish the noble characters

The question of the divine right of kings and how it affects Richard’s character

The end of the play, Bolingbroke’s regrets, and how we might feel about them

The later performance history of the play

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In the fifth part of this short series of guest episodes before we get back to continuing the journey through the Shakespeare and Jonson cannon I had the chance to speak with Dr Ian McCormick about the collection of essays he edited, which pulls together recent Shakespeare criticism in the framework of woke and anti-woke culture and the culture wars of recent years.  It is a wide ranging and thought provoking collection. 

Ian McCormick, was a Professor in the Department of English for the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Northampton, where he taught Shakespeare, Renaissance Literature, 18th-century Literature, and Literary Theory. He has edited and contributed to books in various fields including sexuality and gender studies; modern and postmodern literature; teaching and learning strategies; drama education and critical theory.  He has contributed to many academic publications, written a novel inspired by 18th century epistolatory novels and in the past he has organized two major international conferences for the British Society for Eighteenth-century Studies, at St John's College (University of Oxford).  For the full details of Ian's biography please see the guest page on the podcast website.

Links to 'Woke Shakespeare':

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Woke-Shakespeare-Rethinking-New-Era/dp/B0DQYB2TS5/ref=sr_1_1?

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Shakespeare-Rethinking-New-Era/dp/B0DQYB2TS5/ref=sr_1_1?

If you are interested in being considered to make a contribution to the next volume ‘Shakespeare: New Voices’, you have until the 30th June 2025 to make an application via the Penn State University call for papers page, where some details of the requirements are explained https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/18/shakespeare-new-voices

Support the podcast at:

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