That Shakespeare Life

Shakespeare talks about unbuttoning your sleeve in As You Like It, King Lear undoes a button in Act V of that play, and Moth talks about making a buttonhole lower in Love’s Labour’s Lost. We’ve talked about clothes here on the show previously, but what about the buttons that hold things like sleeves together, and various buttonholes. What were buttons like for Shakespeare’s lifetime, who was making them, and what material was used? How are 16th century buttons different from the ones we have today, and would we find buttons in the expected places, or were there unusual ways to use buttons in Shakespeare’s lifetime? To find out the answers to these questions, we are talking with the Renaissance Tailor, who specializes in recreating 16-17th century clothing, Tammie Dupuis. 

From Hamlet’s father being murdered by poison, to Romeo killing himself when he drinks poison, and several instances of hemlock, dragon’s scales, hebenon and others in between, Shakespeare utilizes poison as a dramatic device in several of his works. The use of poison was not just an easy tool for a plot twist, however, since poison was both a pervasive fear at all levels of society as well as a convenient and readily available method to dispatch someone, given that poison was incredibly hard to trace back to the criminal that administered it. The fear of poison was exacerbated by a broad ignorance of chemistry, resulting in many of the accepted treatments for illness being, in themselves, poison (Syphilis was routinely treated with mercury, for example, which is toxic.) Doctors, as well as monarchs, developed elaborate and unusual tactics for prevention and cure for poison, while those seeking to overthrow a monarch, or take out their enemy, used poison to come up with some sophisticated and complex designs for murder. Here today to share with us the history of real poisons from Shakespeare's lifetime used for medical and criminal application, as well as some ordinary items no one knew was trying to kill them, is our guest and author of The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul. We’re delighted to welcome Eleanor Herman to the show today.  

In Shakespeare’s plays, he uses the word “glass” over 80 times, including to talk about specific kinds of glass like a pilot’s glass in Alls Well That Ends Well, and “the glasses of my sight” in Coriolanus. We can see from the surviving building of Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford Upon Avon, that window glass existed, and there was even an old glass house in the Blackfriars where the Blackfriars theater was located, but how was all this glass made? What materials were used? What other products might have been made from glass, and what colors of glass were available or even most popular? To find out the answers to these questions and explore the history of glass for Shakespeare’s lifetime, we are delighted to welcome Allen Loomis to the show today.  

Throughout Shakespeare’s plays, he references the mind over 400 times including talking about having a quick mind, an unclean mind, and even being out of your mind. Understanding how your brain worked, and what you as an individual could do to control it, and respond to it, was a hot topic for Shakespeare’s lifetime. The rise in books meant that works by authors exploring this topic of the mind, melancholy, and reason were widely available, even directly influencing the works of playwrights like William Shakespeare. Here today to help us understand what the 16th century minds understood about neurology, dreams, and the imagnation is our guest, and author of the book, The Elizabethan Mind, Helen Hackett. 

British sign language has existed in some form among deaf communities at least since the 15th century, when some of the earliest records of sign language reveal descriptions of specific signs, many of which are still in use today. However, for Shakespeare’s lifetime, sign language was far from formalized among the Deaf, and certainly not widely accepted by the hearing community. Similarly, education of the deaf, in terms of schools established to educate the Deaf, Mute, or otherwise alternatively abled, would not take root in England until after Shakespeare’s lifetime, and that wasn’t until well into the 18th century. To help us understand what life was like for a deaf person in Shakespeare’s lifetime, as well as what signs existed, and what records we have from the late 16th and early 17th century for deaf people, sign language, and the deaf community for Shakespeare’s lifetime is our guest, Mary Lutze. 

Close to 300 years before Shakespeare’s birth, in the year 1290, King Edward I expelled anyone of Jewish descent from England all together. It would not be until 40 years after Shakespeare’s death that Jews would be allowed to return to England. This law makes it somewhat confusing to find over 100 references to Jews and “Jewry” in Shakespeare’s plays. How did he know about Jewish people if there weren’t any in England? Additional history further muddies the waters with the story of Roderigo Lopez, a Spanish Christian of Jewish ancestry that worked as a private physician to Elizabeth I. Ultimately, Lopez was executed, his sentence being influenced heavily by rampant antisemitism in England at the time. Lopez was not the only Jew in England for Shakespeare’s lifetime, but his story shines a light on the plight of racial Jews as well as anyone seeking to practice the Jewish religion, who lived during the life of William Shakespeare. Here with us to tell us more about Lopez’s life, Jews in early modern England, and the references to Jews found in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice are our guests, Rhona Silverbush and Sami Plotkin. 

There is something uniquely fascinating about the place where someone famous was born and grew up. As many of us travel long distances just for the chance to visit the birthplace of one of our heroes, we seem to recognize the importance of home as the foundation for future greatness. William Shakespeare’s home is no exception. WilliamShakespeare’s life journey began at his birthplace, making it an essential part of his history and the foundation of what he would go on to become. Here today to share with us the history of Shakespeare’s birthplace, how it was built, and what we know about how the property was used before, and after, Shakespeare’s residence there, is our guest, and author of the first book in the world specifically examining the history ofShakespeare’s Birthplace, Richard Shook