Jan 28, 2019
Elizabeth I issued several proclamations during her reign concerning property, renting, and housing in England. London proper would see it’s population more than double over the course of Shakespeare’s lifetime, and there was very little in the way of any government concerning who could rent the limited available...
Jan 21, 2019
From Merry Wives of Windsor, to Measure for Measure, Alls Well That Ends Well, and others, the role of marriage plays a big role in Shakespeare’s plays, determines the action, defining the characters, and living on several assumptions about the marriage institution. But what are those assumptions, exactly? As a modern...
Jan 14, 2019
When we talk about Shakespeare’s theaters, most often we mean The Globe, with it’s iconic “O’ shape, we sometimes forget that Shakespeare’s plays were actually performed in a variety of venues, and that William was involved in starting the first indoor theater anywhere in the world when he, and his longtime...
Jan 7, 2019
In Shakespeare’s play, The Winter’s Tale, there is a famous stage direction where the character Antigonus exits the stage but the written directions in the play state that he is to “exit, pursued by a bear.” So in performance, this character exits as a bear, seemingly from nowhere, arrives to chase him off the...