For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the line between history and myth was often delightfully blurred. Legends of King Arthur and the fabled Holy Grail captured the imaginations of 16th-century England, weaving their way into royal propaganda, courtly entertainments, and even the education of young scholars. Elizabeth I herself was likened to the Grail Maiden, and stories of sacred relics mingled with Renaissance curiosity and Protestant skepticism.

While Shakespeare doesn’t mention the Grail directly in his plays, the ideas and imagery surrounding it would have been well known to his audiences. In a world shifting from medieval tradition to early modern innovation, what did the Holy Grail mean in Shakespeare’s England?

To help us explore this fascinating blend of myth, politics, and early modern belief, we’re joined today by historian and author Sean Munger.

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Shakespeare’s plays are rich with references to fashion and feathers. In All’s Well That Ends Well, he writes: “Faith, there’s a dozen of ’em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man.”

These plumed hats weren’t just theatrical flourishes—they were part of a broader story of global trade, Indigenous artistic labor, and the ways in which early modern England encountered and represented the wider world.

This week, we’re exploring the fascinating intersection of featherwork, costume design, and Indigenous contributions to the English stage during Shakespeare’s lifetime. Our guest is John Kuhn, whose work on Inimitable Rarities investigates how feathers traveled across oceans to arrive on early modern stages—and what their presence can tell us about colonialism, artistic labor, and performance in Shakespeare’s England.

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So complains one of Shakespeare’s characters in The Merry Wives of Windsor, voicing what was surely a common frustration in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fleas were an ever-present part of daily life—so much so that they appeared in poems, jokes, love songs, and even seven different times across Shakespeare’s plays. This week, we’re scratching the surface of these itchy invaders to explore what their presence reveals about hygiene, health, and humor in the early modern world. Our guest is 17th-century historian Andrea Zuvich, here to help us explore how people really managed fleas in Shakespeare’s lifetime.

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In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Berowne declares, “Let us dance and sport,” while in Twelfth Night, Sir Toby Belch exclaims, “Shall we set about some revels?” Shakespeare’s plays are filled with movement—more than 100 stage directions across his works call for a dance, making dance not merely entertainment, but a powerful form of expression in the early modern world.

This week on That Shakespeare Life, we’re taking a closer look at what those dances might have looked like in real life. What was the significance of dancing in the 16th and early 17th centuries? What kinds of dances were popular? And how did they reflect the politics, courtship, and social hierarchies of the day?

To help us explore the rhythm and meaning behind Shakespeare’s choreography is our guest, historian and dance scholar Emily Winerock.

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When you picture a Shakespeare play, you likely imagine a continuous performance—scene following scene, act following act—until the final bow. But in Shakespeare’s lifetime, especially at indoor theatres like the Blackfriars, plays weren’t always presented without pause. Candlelight, used to illuminate the stage, had to be trimmed, replaced, or even relit during performances, which meant intentional gaps were built into the show itself. These intervals weren’t just practical; they were part of the theatrical experience—inviting music, moments of reflection, and a rhythm that modern audiences rarely consider.

Today we’re diving into this largely overlooked aspect of early modern theatre: the interval. What did it look like? What happened during it? And how did it influence the pacing and experience of Shakespeare’s plays?

To help us explore this topic, we’re delighted to welcome Mark Hutchings, whose latest research shines a spotlight on the physical and performative realities of candlelit stages, and their intervals, for the 16th and 17th centuries.

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In King Lear, Shakespeare has the king cry out, “Break, heart; I prithee, break!”—a line rich with sorrow, and one that may have held deeper meaning for Shakespeare’s audience than we often assume. Modern medicine identifies Takotsubo Syndrome—also known as “broken heart syndrome”—as a temporary dysfunction of the heart triggered by emotional distress. Incredibly, this concept may have had early roots in the Renaissance understanding of how emotion and the body were intertwined.

In this episode, we explore the 17th-century medical beliefs that made room for literal heartbreak, and the evidence in Shakespeare’s plays that suggests he was engaging with those very ideas. From Lear and Gloucester to Enobarbus and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s characters don’t just feel emotion—they suffer from it physically, sometimes fatally.

Our guests this week, Dr. Bríd Phillips and Dr. Claire Hansen, are here to unpack their research connecting Shakespeare’s portrayals of heartbreak with modern cardiology, showing us how the science of the heart may have been hidden in plain sight on the Renaissance stage.

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