Here's something I can pretty much guarantee.

If you went to the theater and the next day at work you told a friend about it,

your friend did not respond by saying,

Oh, wow, how did it smell?

It turns out in Shakespeare's Day, that was not such a safe bet.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

These days, we're used to thinking about people going to the Elizabethan theater to hear a play.

And why wouldn't they? One of the most glorious aspects of Shakespeare is the words. But Farah Kareem Cooper

and Tiffany Stern would like to invite you to see that world differently. In 2013, they edited

a collection of essays written by themselves and nine other theater historians

to give us an understanding of how, for Elizabethans, theater was a full-body experience.

Their book, Shakespeare's Theater and The Effects of Performance, offers copious examples of just how playwrights did this.

Fireworks hissing and shooting across the stage.

Fake blood. Fake body parts. Disguises.

Paint on the walls and on actors' faces. The smell of blood and death.

And worse. All of it designed to create wonder and sensation by appealing to every part of the body.

Tiffany Stern is a professor of Shakespeare and early modern drama with the University of

Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Farah Kareem Cooper is Head of higher education and research at Shakespeare's

Globe in London. They came in recently to talk about how 16th century theater companies

wove physical and sensual staging effects into their productions. We call this podcast,

...