The History Of European Theatre

Episode 232: Although ‘Coriolanus’ is officially Shakespeare’s last Roman tragedy his next play, ‘Cymbeline’, is set in the Roman period, but in England, and suggests that Shakespeare was still deeply attracted to Roman history, although in this case his plundering of Roman history was not directly from Plutarch, but another of his favourite sources.  There are some themes in ‘Cymbeline’ that you will find familiar from ‘Coriolanus’ and will encounter again in ‘The Tempest’, but once again we have a play from Shakespeare that is not quite like any other of his, despite some shared themes with the later plays.  For many Cymbeline remains an enigmatic play, or a flawed experiment, or an example of the work of a playwright growing tired with his work, and perhaps something of all of that is present in the play, but there is, I think, a good argument that Shakespeare was in fact still experimenting with form and content and responding to concerns of his time in his plays just as he always had done.The dating of the playThe early printing of the play‘Innogen’ Vs ‘Imogen’The sources for the playA summary of a complicated plot‘Cymbeline’ as a tragicomedyThe comic character of ClotenJames 1st as represented by King CymbelineThe historical Britain represented in the playThe nobility of the British characters in the playIachimo, the other Roman characters and the English attitude towards ItaliansThe sons of BalariusImogen – a great Shakespeare heroine or slightly unsatisfying?A brief critical history of the playThe later performance history of the playSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month. 

Episode 231: Shakespeare in noted for the diversity of deaths in the plays and the way that he represents the mechanics of those deaths.  My guest for this episode has written a book on this very subject, ‘Death by Shakespeare’, who’s subtitle ‘Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts’, gives just a hint of that diversity.  In the book Kathryn Harkup casts a scientific eye over the varied and creative ways that Shakespeare’s characters die and both questions and admires the accuracy of the portrayals of death in the plays and looks at how Shakespeare’s audience would have received these events, and much more.Kathryn Harkup is a former chemist turned writer and science communicator. Her interests are in anything gothic, gory and geeky, and preferably all three. She has written several books on the crossover between science, literature and pop culture including The Secret Lives of the Elements, The Secret Lives of Molecules, A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, Making the Monster: The Science of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts, Superspy Science: Science, Death and Tech in the World of James Bond and Vampirology: The Science of Horror’s Most Famous Fiend. Her latest book is V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death.I spoke to Kathryn over a zoom callLinks to ‘Death By Shakespeare’Katherine’s Website: https://harkup.co.ukAmazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B084RG3PXDPublisher’s website: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/death-by-shakespeare-9781472958204Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Shakespeare-Snakebites-Stabbings-Broken/dp/1472958209/ref=sr_1_1Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month

Episode 230:Shakespeare probably did not realise it, but his next offering would be his last tragedy and his last Roman play, but for this one he reached back into a much earlier Rome than the world of Caesar, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra that he had previously mined.  ‘Coriolanus’, the choice of the story of the legendary Caius Martius, a 5th century BC Roman general who was both fated and vilified during his political career and who was also known for his antipathy towards a hungry Roman population, might have been inspired by recent events in England.  We can’t be certain of that, but whatever the case there it is quite clearly one of Shakespeare’s most political tragedies which has become a play that perhaps more than any other in the cannon has been used to make political points, particularly when we consider productions in the last century.The dating of the playThe play at the Blackfriars Theatre and in the First FolioThe sources for the playA summary of the plotCoriolanus as a political play, but not representative of his own viewsThe question of how power should be granted The character of CoriolanusThe use of language as an expression of characterThe character and speech of MeneniusThe character and speech of VoluminaThe pivotal moment of silence in the playThe performance history of the playA final word on the play from Willian HazlittSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month. 

Episode 229:It has been long recognised that Shakespeare included a lot of sex references in his plays, many of which are now quite obscure to the modern viewer.  Recently a book called ‘Shakespeare on Sex’ caught my eye and I had an entertaining time reading it and thinking on the different perspective it offers on Shakespeare when seen through the lens of how Shakespeare thought about sex for his plays.I was very pleased when author Marc Berley agreed to come on the podcast to discuss the book, although it did throw up a question immediately about how we could speak frankly about this subject on the podcast.  As you will hear we were still struggling a bit with that question as we spoke.  I hope we got the balance right, but be warned we talk about the language and mechanics of sex as they appear in the plays and hence I have marked this episode up as ‘explicit’.Marc Berley was professor of English at Rutgers and Barnard/Columbia. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in the Iowa Review, the Threepenny Review, Lit Hub, and newspapers nationwide. He has appeared on BBC and PBS and been covered by Reuters, USA Today, the Washington Post, and ABC’s The View. He holds a BA, MA, and PhD in English and comparative literature from Columbia. The author of ‘After the Heavenly Tune’ and editor of ‘Reading the Renaissance’, he is founding editor of the award-winning literary magazine LitMag. He lives in New York.Find out more about Marc and his work at: https://marcberley.com/Amazon UK link to 'Shakespeare on Sex: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Sex-Wills-Shaped-Liberated/dp/1510786465Amazon US link to 'Shakespeare on Sex': https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Sex-Wills-Shaped-Liberated/dp/1510786465Publishers website link: https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510786462/shakespeare-on-sex/Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month. 

Episode 228:About the same time that Shakespeare was retelling the story of Pericles Ben Jonson was writing ‘Epicene, or the Silent Woman’, a play set very firmly in his home turf of London.  It had been three years since Jonson had written for the public stage, which is not to say that his last play ‘Volpone’ was not a success, but he was occupied with producing masques for the King and the court, working with Inigo Jones, which a much more profitable endeavour for him personally than another satire for the public to judge.  In those three years he produced seven court entertainments, so he was far from idle. Whatever the case ‘Epicene’ is another Jonson play that had a tricky start in life, although on the scale of some of his previous issues with the law and failures on the stage he probably did not feel too bad about this one.Dating and the first performances of the playThe Whitefriars TheatreThe sources for the playThe publication history of the playA synopsis of the plotThe first reception of ‘Epicene’Lady Arabella Stuart’s complaintThe location of the Whitefriars TheatreThe two prologues to the playJonson’s attitude to gender rolesThe Strand and the new West EndThe noise of the cityThe character of MoroseThe supporting charactersWomen, clothes, and the artifice of their appearanceCaptain and mistress OtterThe final reveal in the playReligious references in the playWhen Jonson brings himself into the textThe performance history of the play and its influencesSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month.  

Episode 227One of the questions that immediately arises when we consider the indoor theatres is how they were lit, although there are also many other questions about how performing indoors was informed by the experience of the touring companies and how it changed the nature of playing itself.Very early in my journey through Shakespeare for the podcast I met Nic Brownlee who was then in the throes of completing his study into indoor theatre lighting, so the idea for this episode has been on my mind for a long time and I’m pleased that now Nic has finished his study I can bring you this discussion at an appropriate moment in the podcast timeline. Nic Brownlie recently graduated with a PhD from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, completing a thesis focused on the effects of candlelight at Shakespeare’s Blackfriars playhouse. Nic currently runs the A Place to Write retreat centre in North Wales with his wife, Wendy, where they offer annual Shakespeare retreats exploring different genres of Shakespeare’s plays. In a varied prior career, he completed an English degree at the University of Hull, trained at Mountview Theatre School in London, and worked as an actor, theatre director and stage lighting designer for many years, including managing his own educational Shakespeare company. He has taught acting, stage lighting, and English Literature in a variety of educational settings, from secondary schools to higher education establishments, and he is currently working on a series of academic articles and a book detailing his research into Shakespeare’s late plays.I first met Nic when I attended a three day retreat at ‘A Place to Write’  where we read and watched and discussed three Shakespeare comedies, among other things, so I can personally recommend the work he and Wendy are doing there.  I talked to Nic over a zoom call from A Place To Write where he was somewhere between guests Breakfasts and planning his next play sessions and opened out conversation asking about how ‘A Place To Write’ came to be.Find details for 'A Place To Write' Shakespeare and writing retreats at: www.aplacetowrite.co.ukSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month. 

Episode 225:Last time my guest Paul Fried and I discussed Biblical Allusion in Shakespeare with particular reference to Hamlet.  This is the second part of our conversation, so please do make sure you have listened to part one before continuing here, things will make a lot more sense if you do. I first came across Paul’s Blog, Hamlet’s Bible, when I was researching my episodes on King Lear and I was very pleased to find that not only was it useful for those episodes but was a series of very interesting posts relating to Biblical allusion in Shakespeare, so, of course, I asked Paul, if he would like to come onto the podcast to share some of his insights into this subject.  Paul is a retired college lecturer who has devoted years of study to Shakespeare and the bible and his blog, now in it’s tenth year, has become his way of sharing his research prior to what he hopes will be a published volume on Biblical allusion in Hamlet.  He has also contributed several papers to Shakespeare conferences, most recently at the Shakespeare Association of America conference held in Denver in April 2026.I spoke to Paul from his home in Minnesota over a zoom call.Link to Paul’s blog ‘Hamlet’s Bible’: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/Link to ‘Hamlet’s Bible’ on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamletsbible/Link to Paul’s account on ‘X’: https://x.com/padrianfriedSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month. 

Episode 224: While I was looking into some details while I was preparing for the episodes on King Lear  I came across an article that was part of a blog called ‘Hamlet’s Bible’, which is written by Paul Fried and was very pleased to find a series of very interesting posts relating to Biblical allusion in Shakespeare, so, of course, I asked the author of the blog, Paul Fried, if he would like to come onto the podcast to share some of his insights into this subject.  Paul is a retired college lecturer who has devoted years of study to Shakespeare and the bible and his blog, now in it’s tenth year, has become his way of sharing his research prior to what he hopes will be a published volume on Biblical allusion in Hamlet.  He has also contributed several papers to Shakespeare conferences, most recently at the Shakespeare Association of America conference held in Denver in April 2026.I spoke to Paul from his home in Minnesota over a zoom call.Link to Paul’s blog ‘Hamlet’s Bible’: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/Link to ‘Hamlet’s Bible’ on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamletsbible/Link to Paul’s account on ‘X’: https://x.com/padrianfriedSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetpYou can find an advertisement free version of the latest podcast episodes by joining on Patreon at the lowest paid tier level – that’s for just £1 per month.