LibGuides: The World of William Shakespeare: Elizabethan Era London

Elizabethan London

Image from http://labonneviveuse.wordpress.com/tag/anonymous-film/, accessed August 25, 2021.

From Shakespeare, Anthony Burgess, 1978:

"...The City meant roughly what we mean by the City of London--a crammed commercial huddle that smells the river. The Thames was everybody's thoroughfare. The Londoners of Chaucer's time had had difficulty bridging it; the Elizabethans had achieved only London Bridge. You crossed normally by boat-taxi, the boatmen calling 'Eastward-ho' and 'Westward-ho'. There was commerce on the river, but also gilded barges, sometimes with royalty in them. Chained to the banks there were sometimes criminals, who had to abide the washing of three tides. The river had to look on other emblems of the brutality of the age--the severed heads on Temple Bar and on London Bridge itself...."

The streets were narrow, cobbled, slippery with the slime of refuse. Houses were crammed together, and there were a lot of furtive alleys. Chamber pots, or jordans, were emptied out of windows. There was no drainage. Fleet Ditch stank to make a man throw up his gorge. But the City had its natural cleansers--the kites, graceful birds that made their nests of rags and refuse in the forks of trees. They scavenged, eating anything with relish. ... And countering the bad, man-made odors, the smells of the countryside floated in. There were rosy milkmaids in the early morning streets, and sellers of newly gathered cresses.

It was a city of loud noises--hooves and raw coach wheels on the cobbles, the yells of traders, the brawling of apprentices, scuffles to keep the wall and not be thrown into the oozy kennel. Even normal conversation must have been loud since everybody was, by our standards, tipsy. Nobody drank water, and tea had not yet come in. Ale was the standard tipple, and it was strong. Ale for breakfast was a good means of starting the day in euphoria or truculence. Ale for dinner refocillated the wasted tissues of the morning. Ale for supper ensured a heavy snoring repose. The better sort drank wine, which promoted good fellowship and led to sword fights. It was not what we would call a sober city."

From http://elizabethan.org/compendium/27.html; accessed August 25, 2021.

Works on Shakespeare and his era in the HMCPL Catalog

Complete Plays by William Shakespeare
Call Number: 822.33 SHA
ISBN: 9781435141834
Publication Date: 2012
From the book jacket: "'William Shakespeare: Complete Plays' collects all thirty-seven of the immortal bard's comedies, tragedies, and historical plays. IN this volume all of Shakespeare's memorable characters--star-crossed lovers, majestic monarchs, wise fools, lovable rogues, treacherous villains, conflicted heroes, cagey heroines, and creatures magical and mythic--strut and fret their hour upon the stage. These characters, and the roles they play, have influenced virtually all literature written since."

Following are works on Shakespeare and his era in the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library catalog:

Shakespeare A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Plays, His Poems, His Life and Times, and More by Charles Boyce
Call Number: 822.33 BOY
ISBN: 0816018057
Publication Date: 1990
From the book jacket: "'Shakespeare A to Z' is the only single-volume reference to virtually everything one needs to know about the Bard. Incorporating nearly 3,000 entries and more than 50 illustrations, it provides comprehensive information on all facets of Shakespeare's life and works."
Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History by Jonathan Bate, Russell Jackson, editors
Call Number: 822.33 SHA
ISBN: 0198123728
Publication Date: 1996
From the book jacket: "This is the only modern stage-history of its kind, and a book for every Shakespeare-lover. It tells the story of the plays on the English stage--four hundred years of dramatic history, from the vital, competitive theater of Shakespeare's own lifetime to the wealth of interpretations, classical to experimental, of the present day."
A Companion to Shakespeare by David Scott Kastan, editor
Call Number: 942.055 COM
ISBN: 0631206655
Publication Date: 1999
From the book jacket: "This 'Companion to Shakespeare' is an indispensable book for students and teachers of Shakespeare, indeed for anyone with an interest in his plays. It offers a remarkably innovative and comprehensive picture of the theatrical, literary, intellectual, and social worlds in which Shakespeare wrote and in which his plays were produced....including essays on the organization and regulation of Elizabethan playing, on the printing, publication, and circulation of the play-texts, on Shakespeare's reading, on religion and political thought in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and on the linguistic and literary environment in which he wrote..."
All Things Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia of Shakespeare's World (Vols. I and II) by Kirstin Olsen
Call Number: 822.33 OLS V.1
ISBN: 9780313315039
Publication Date: 2002
From the introduction: "For those interested in the physical surroundings of Shakespeare's world, this book is an invaluable reference. More than 200 entries illuminate such subjects as the coins, clothing, food, drink, animals, occupations, architectural methods, symbolism, agriculture, and rites of passage of the Renaissance."
Shakespeare After All by Marjoie Garber
Call Number: 822.33 GAR
ISBN: 0375421904
Publication Date: 2004
From the book jacket: "In 'Shakespeare After All,' Marjorie Garber--professor of English and director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University--gives us a magisterial work of criticism, authoritative and engaging, based on her hugely popular lecture courses at Yale and Harvard over the past thirty years. Richly informed by Shakespearean scholarship of the latter half of the twentieth century, this book offers passionate and revealing readings of all thirty-eight of Shakespeare's plays, in chronological sequence, from 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona to 'The Two Noble Kinsmen'. With erudition lightly carried, Garber illumines the overarching patterns and lush details of the plays, closely attentive to what matters most in Shakespeare: language, theme, plot, and character."
Shakespeare and Modern Culture by Marjorie Garber
Call Number: 822.33 GAR
ISBN: 0307377679
Publication Date: 2008
"From one of the world's premier Shakespeare scholars comes a magisterial new study whose premise is "that Shakespeare makes modern culture and that modern culture makes Shakespeare."

Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as "naturally" true: ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and contemporary culture, from James Joyce's Ulysses to George W. Bush's reading list. From the persistence of difference in Othello to the matter of character in Hamlet to the untimeliness of youth in Romeo and Juliet, Garber discusses how these ideas have been re-imagined in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news, and in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law. Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a brilliant recasting of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of the protean Shakespeare." Amazon.com
A Brief Guide to William Shakespeare by Peter Ackroyd
Call Number: 822.33 ACK
ISBN: 9780762438549
Publication Date: 2010
From the book jacket: "This essential guide contains a commentary by distinguished Shakespeare biographer Peter Ackroyd and includes summaries of all the plays, along with descriptions of the cast and the drama--not forgetting the best speeches, and the wit and wisdom from across the works. If also brings alive the world of Elizabethan theater to show what life would have been like at the Globe on London's South Bank, and how the players brought Shakespeare's words to life."