From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

This podcast is called,

Murders have been performed too terrible for the ear.

In the work of any writer, we can find reflections of the time and place where he or she was writing.

And that's not just when Leo Tolstoy is writing about Napoleon or Lorraine Hansberry's

characters talk to us about discrimination.

It's also true for science fiction writers who set their work in the distant future,

and for writers of historical fiction, like Shakespeare.

Regardless of whether it's Symboline in ancient Britain or Romeo and Juliet

in contemporary Verona, every student is taught that the rivalries, politics, and social mores of the

period offer a window into the world of Elizabethan England. In this podcast, we're going to

take a look at one of those practices,

one that shows up a lot in Shakespeare. This is a discussion about fighting. People attacking

each other with knives, rocks, sticks, and tools in the tavern, in the workplace, and especially

in the street. We have an unusual pair of guests to

talk about this unusual subject, two people who come at it from totally different directions.

Vanessa McMahon is author of a 2006 book titled Murder in Shakespeare's England. She scoured

Elizabethan court records and trial transcripts to

find out exactly how people in Shakespeare's time felt and what they did about infanticide,

manslaughter, and, for our purposes today, murder. Our other guest is Casey Caliba.

Casey also specialized in the subject of Elizabethan street

...