That Shakespeare Life

Shakespeare's plays and poems are filled with birds—from familiar crows, swans, and sparrows to species that would have seemed rare, exotic, or unusual in Renaissance England. But these birds are more than decorative details. They carry symbolism, reflect the natural world Shakespeare knew, and reveal how people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries understood the animals around them.
In this episode, artist and researcher Missy Dunaway joins us to explore her Birds of Shakespeare project, which documents all sixty-five bird species referenced across Shakespeare's works. We'll discover how she identified each bird, the historical sources behind her paintings, the plants and symbolism included in her compositions, and some of the most surprising birds to appear in Shakespeare's writing.

Shakespeare mentions cats over 30 times in his plays, including to talk about a gib cat, a musk-cat, cats chasing mice and even making perfume. It's obvious that cats were present for Shakespeare's lifetime, but what do these references in the plays show us about their place in society and perhaps in people's homes for Shakespeare's England? Did Shakespeare keep a pet cat, would they have been useful for fighting against plague, and what exactly did a 16th century cat look like?   Here today to help answer these questions and take us through the artifacts, primary documents, and paintings that reveal the feline world of Shakespeare's England is our guest, Helen Parish.  

Helen Parish is a Professor of History at the University of Reading and author of, "Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils": Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials"  

Helen's work focuses on cats as a witch's familiar, but her research looks further into the details about how cats lived in the 16th cenutry and today she's here to help us explore cats for Shakespear's England.

Shakespeare mentions "housewife" in his works 14 times, including to identify both a "good housewife" as well as a "false housewife." These descriptions appear alongside one accusation that a woman was being someone's "franklin's housewife." 
As an essential part of daily living in Shakespeare's England, I wanted to track down exactly what was involved in being a 16-17th century housewife, and there was no one better suited to give us the details than Jane Whittle, author of Women's Work in Rural England, 1500-1700. 
Jane joins us today to help us explore the 16th century definition of an English housewife, including the nature, jobs, and reptuation were for this position, as well as to help us understand the history behind Shakespeare's use of that term in his plays.

With it estimated that travel from Stratford Upon Avon to London might take days or even weeks depending on the weather and mode of transportation, it's only logical to think that Shakespeare must have had a place to stay when he was in London for work.  
There is a court case in which Shakespeare is mentioned by name that places him as a lodger with the Mountjoy family on Silver Street in 1604. There's also documentary evidence to suggest Shakespeare was neighbors with a young John Fletcher in Bishopsgate. And it only makes sense to expect that Shakespeare might have had a place to stay near The Globe theater in Southwark, but that remains largely a guess. More recently, Matthew Steggle has done new research into the letter written to Mrs. Shakespeare, which places Mr. And Mrs. Shakespeare once again, residing in London.  
When it comes to his Blackfriars property, however, scholars have been stumped because documentary evidence suggests Shakespeare did own property in the Blackfriars, but no one knew exactly where until now. Our guest this week, Lucy Munro, has uncovered three new documents including a set of floorplans for the Blackfriars building, that reveal not only where Shakespeare's property was located, but precisely how large it was, and exactly how it was positioned in relation to neighboring structures in the Blackfriars.

In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, there's a lively scene set in Eastcheap, inside the bustling Boar's Head Tavern, where the roguish Sir John Falstaff trades wit and wine with the young Prince Hal—England's future Henry V. To Shakespeare's audience, this wasn't some distant or imagined world. Eastcheap was real. The taverns were real. And the cups of ale and small beer passed across those tables were the very same drinks many theatergoers would have enjoyed before walking into the Globe. 
This week, we're joined by Mark Hailwood, author of Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England, to step through the tavern door and into the noisy, smoky world of 16th- and 17th-century alehouses.  
Together, we'll explore the people who ran these establishments, the customs and rules that governed them, the drinks poured across the bar, and the colorful realities behind Shakespeare's tavern scenes. Was Mistress Quickly inspired by real alehouse keepers? How accurate were Shakespeare's depictions of tavern life? And what details from the plays ring true—or delightfully false—when held up against the history of early modern England? 
So pull up a chair by the hearth, mind your purse, and let us pour you a mug of small beer as Mark Hailwood guides us through the history, humor, and lore of Shakespeare's tavern world.