Shakespeare's First Playhouse

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Daniel Swift to delve into the formative years of William Shakespeare's career. They explore the vital role of London's first playhouse and the tumultuous world of late 16th-century theatre, discussing how James Burbage's ambitious vision and his son Richard's unparalleled acting talent profoundly influenced Shakespeare's work. The economic realities and social dynamics of Elizabethan England unveiled the collaborative and pragmatic spirit that helped shape one of history's greatest playwrights.

Shakespeare's Players: Burbage and Kempe:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3vhb375ekX0eLm482VtG24

How the Elizabethan World Shaped Shakespeare:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ewBpG0vQDIRnRnD7A3N1R

Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Alice Smith, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb.
0:02.6	If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
0:10.5	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries,
0:16.0	including my own recent two-part series, A World Torn Apart, The Dissolution of the Monastries, and enjoy a new release every week.
0:25.2	Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:32.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise.
0:46.8	Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.
1:01.8	Before the Globe, there was the theatre.
1:04.7	They were in 1576 and secretly taken down timber by timber in 1598.
1:09.7	It was the place of William Shakespeare's training.
1:12.6	We know Shakespeare, of course, as the confident and assured genius, the mastermind behind Hamlet and King Lear and Othello,
1:18.6	but this is the backstory. Shakespeare may have been married at an early age, and so perhaps unable to become an apprentice proper,
1:25.6	but my guest today suggests that apprenticeship
1:28.1	is the deep metaphor behind Shakespeare's early career. And that by returning to these early years
1:33.9	of Shakespeare's career and the building of London's first playhouse, we are returned to
1:38.1	something of Shakespeare's worldview that is otherwise lost to us. In a nutshell, it is this, that art was craft. Within the 1580s and 90s,
1:47.3	money was at the heart of art and that art might properly belong within the world of work.
1:52.4	This might sound disenchanted, reductive, but as you'll learn, it roots Shakespeare in his age
1:58.6	and offers a strikingly original way into understanding
2:01.8	him. It is the story of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. My guest today is Dr. Daniel
2:08.1	Swift, Associate Professor at Northeastern University in London. His first book, Bomber County,
2:13.1	was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. He's also the
	...

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