Who Was Shakespeare Really?

Who Was Shakespeare Really?

Uncover the mystery behind William Shakespeare in this captivating first episode of the Brit Lit Book Club. Who was the glove-maker's son from Stratford-upon-Avon who became the greatest writer in the English language? Host Vanessa Hunt explores the fascinating gaps in Shakespeare's biography, from his mysterious "lost years" to the controversial authorship question that has puzzled scholars for centuries.

Discover why a man with no university education could write with such sophisticated knowledge of law, politics, and classical mythology. Journey back to Elizabethan England in 1564 to understand the rigid class system Shakespeare was born into—and how his success defied every social expectation of his time. Learn about the religious tensions between Protestant and Catholic England, the explosion of London theater culture, and why Shakespeare's mixed audience of groundlings and nobles shaped his revolutionary writing style.

This episode reveals why the "upstart crow" criticized by university-educated playwrights became more influential than any of them, and why his story of social mobility through talent still resonates today. From his baptism at Holy Trinity Church to performances before Queen Elizabeth I, trace the remarkable journey of William Shakespeare.

Featured Topics:

• Shakespeare's mysterious birth and lost years (1585-1592)
• The Shakespeare authorship debate and conspiracy theories
• Daily life in Elizabethan London and Stratford-upon-Avon
• Theater culture in Shakespeare's England
• Social class, religion, and politics in the 1590s
• Why Shakespeare's phrases still shape modern English
• Book recommendations for further investigation

Perfect for:
Shakespeare enthusiasts, British literature students, history buffs, theater lovers, and anyone planning a literary pilgrimage to England. Whether you're revisiting Shakespeare after school or discovering him for the first time, this episode offers fresh perspectives on the man behind the masterpieces.

Topics: William Shakespeare, Shakespeare biography, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare authorship question, Elizabethan England, Globe Theatre, Shakespeare mystery, lost years, British literature podcast, Shakespeare podcast, Tudor England, Elizabeth I, Renaissance theater, Shakespeare's life, literary history, Book Club Tour, Vanessa Hunt, Shakespeare travel, literary tourism

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Follow along with our adventures, or join us!

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to the Brit Lit Book Club. I'm your host Vanessa Hunt, and I'm absolutely thrilled you decided to join me on this journey through the greatest works of British literature. Before we dive in, grab yourself a cup of tea I've got my favorite fall tea called Baby Spice for my favorite tea shop in England, bird and blend steaming away here beside me. And there's something perfectly fitting about sipping tea while we explore the mysteries of British literature together. Now, I'll be honest with you, I'm not just a literature enthusiast sitting in my living room with a cup of tea and a stack of books, though I do love tea and books. I'm actually the founder of the Book Club Tour where I take fellow book lovers on literary adventures through England to Jane Austin's house, the Bronte Parsonage, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and all those magical places where these incredible stories were born. But here's the thing, not everyone can hop on a plane to England tomorrow, so I created this podcast to bring those literary adventures to you wherever you are. We're going to deep dive into the books, the authors, and most importantly, the world they lived in because understanding their world helps us understand why these stories still matter so much today. And we're starting with the big one. The man who arguably created modern English literature as we know it, a playwright and poet whose works were performed more often than any other writer in history. Someone whose phrases you probably use every day without even realizing it. You guessed it. William Shakespeare. I chose to start with Shakespeare because I spent the weekend in Cedar City, Utah at the Utah Shakespeare Festival where my kids competed in several competitions, including dancing ensemble scenes and monologues. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun and something we do every year. And just last month I was in Stratford upon Avon touring Shakespeare's home. So back to Shakespeare. Here's the question that's been bothering scholars for centuries. Who was this man really? Because the more you dig into Shakespeare's life, the more mysterious it becomes. And today we're going to explore that mystery. Let me paint you a picture. It's 1564 in Stratford upon Avon, a small market town in England. A child is born to John Shakespeare, a glove maker and a local politician. And Mary Arden, who came from a family with a bit more social standing. They name him, William. Now, this is where our first mystery begins. We have no record of William Shakespeare's birth. We know he was baptized on April 26th, 1564 at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. Tradition says he was born on April 23rd, which would be quite poetic since that's also the day he died 52 years later, and it happens to be St. George's Day. England's patron Saint. But honestly, we're just guessing. What else don't we know? We have no record of his education, though. He probably attended the local grammar school. We know he married Anne Hathaway in 1582 when he was 18 and she was 26. She was pregnant, by the way, which was scandalous, but not uncommon. They had three children, Susanna and twins, Hamnet and Judith. But then, and this is a real mysterious part, William Shakespeare essentially disappears from the historical record for seven years, from 1585 to 1592. We have no idea. What he was doing. Scholars call these the lost years. Some think he was a school teacher. Others believe he worked as a lawyer's clerk, which would explain his detailed knowledge of legal terminology. Some romantic theories suggest he was poaching deer on Sir Thomas Lucy's land and fled to London to escape prosecution. The truth is we simply don't know. What we do know is that by 1592, he's in London and already established enough in the theater world that other playwrights are jealous of him. Robert Green, a university educated playwright, wrote a nasty pamphlet calling Shakespeare an upstart Crow, who thought himself the only shake scene in a country. Here's what makes this so fascinating. Shakespeare wasn't university educated in Elizabethan England. That was a big deal. Most successful playwrights went to Oxford or Cambridge. They studied classical literature, learned Latin and Greek, understood the sophisticated references. The educated audiences expected, but Shakespeare, a glove maker son from a small town who probably never traveled outside England before moving to London. How did he know so much about Italian politics for his Italian place? How did he understand court life so intimately? How did he write such sophisticated knowledge of law, medicine, military strategy, and classical mythology? That is what scholars call the authorship question, and it spawned countless theories. Some people think the plays were actually written by Christopher Marlowe or the Earl of Oxford, or even Queen Elizabeth herself. The theory goes that someone of higher social standing wrote the plays and used William Shakespeare as a pen name. But here's what I find remarkable, and this ties directly into understanding Elizabeth in England. The very fact that we're surprised by Shakespeare's background tells us everything about the rigid class system he was born into. Let me explain what I mean by taking you back to 1564 to the world that shaped our mysterious playwright. Picture England 1564. Elizabeth has been on the throne for six years. She's 31 years old, unmarried, which is causing panic among her advisors, and she's trying to hold together a country that's been torn apart by religious upheaval for decades. Her father, Henry viii, broke with the Catholic church to marry her mother and Bolin. Then her half sister Mary tried to drag England back to Catholicism, burning Protestants at the stake. Now Elizabeth is attempting a middle path, but the religious tensions are still simmering everywhere. This isn't the England of Downton Abbey drawing rooms and country estates. This is a country where the average person lives their entire life within a 10 mile radius of where they were born, where most people can't read or write, where life expectancy is about 35 years. And that's if you survive childhood, which about half of children don't. London where Shakespeare will eventually make. His name was about 200,000 people crammed into what we consider a tiny area Today. The Thames isn't the romantic river you see in the movies. It's an open sewer. People dump their waste directly into it. The smell must have been overwhelming. But here's the thing, it's also a time of incredible energy and possibility. England is becoming a major European power. Francis Drake is circumnavigating the globe. Walter Rally is attempting to establish colonies in the new world. The printing press is spreading ideas faster than ever before, and theater theater is exploding in popularity. When Shakespeare arrived in London in the late 1580s, there were several permanent playhouses, the theater, the curtain, and soon the famous rose. This was revolutionary before this plays were performed in in yards, great halls or temporary stages. Now, you could make a living as an actor or playwright, but, and this is crucial. Theater was not considered high art. It was popular entertainment, the equivalent of television today, respectable people looked down on it. The city authorities constantly tried to shut down Playhouse. Because they attracted crowds which could spread plague, and because they were seen as morally corrupting, the audience was everybody from Groundlings who paid a penny to stand in the yard to nobles and the expensive galleries. A single play had to entertain illiterate laborers and university educated courtier. That's an incredibly challenging audience to write for. This mixed audience explains so much about Shakespeare's writing. The body jokes for the ground links. The sophisticated word play for the educated, the political intrigue that would interest the courtier, the sword fights, and ghosts. That would thrill everyone to really understand who Shakespeare was and why his success was so remarkable. We need to understand the rigid social hierarchy he was born into. At the top we have the Monarch Elizabeth, the first ruling by Divine W, right below her, the nobility Dukes Earls Barons. These people own vast estates and wield enormous political power. Then come the Gentry, knights and gentlemen, who own smaller estates, but still don't work with their hands. Below them are merchants and professionals, lawyers, doctors, successful traders. This is roughly where Shakespeare's family started. His father John, was a glove maker. But he was also involved in local politics, serving as an alderman and briefly as a bailiff. Essentially the mayor of Stratford. Then you have Yeomen small farmers who own the land below them, husband men who rent their farms, and the bottom laborers and servants who own nothing and work for others. The system wasn't just about money, it was about honor blood education. The idea that a glove maker's son could write plays. That would be performed before the Queen. That was almost unthinkable, and yet that's exactly what happened politically. Elizabeth England was a Protestant nation surrounded by Catholic enemies. Spain was a great threat. Philip II had been married to Elizabeth's sister, Mary, and he saw himself as the rightful ruler of England. The Spanish armada would attack in 1588 when Shakespeare was just getting established in London. Catholics in England were seen as potential traitors. They faced heavy fines for not attending Protestant services. Some were executed for treason. This creates a fascinating tension in Shakespeare's plays. He clearly knew Catholic theology and ritual, but he had to be careful about how he portrayed religious themes. The religion question actually adds another layer to Shakespeare Mystery. His father John stopped attending church council meetings around 1576 and was later fined for not attending Protestant services. Some scholars think the family had Catholic sympathies, which they had to hide. If true, this would explain some of the religious imagery in the plays, and it would also explain why Shakespeare was so careful to avoid political controversy in his writing. He wasn't trying to promote Protestant or Catholic theology. He was trying to survive and succeed in a world where the wrong religious association could get you killed. So why does this all matter? Why should we care about the mysteries surrounding a playwright who died 400 years ago? First, because Shakespeare's story is about social mobility and the power of talent. Here's someone who, by all the rules of his society, shouldn't have succeeded. He didn't have the right background, the right education, the right connections, and yet he became the most successful playwright of his era. His success challenges every assumption about who gets to tell stories and whose stories matter. The university educated playwrights of his time wrote for educated audience. Shakespeare wrote for everyone and somehow managed to create art that works on multiple levels simultaneously. Second, because the world that shaped Shakespeare, a world of religious conflict. Political uncertainty, rapid social change, and new technologies disrupting old ways of life. Sounds remarkably familiar, doesn't it? Elizabeth in England was grappling with questions. We are still asking today. How do we balance security with freedom? How do we maintain social order while allowing our individual ambition? How do we preserve traditional values while adapting to rapid change? And finally, because the mystery of who Shakespeare really was, reminds us that the most important thing about any writer isn't their biography. It's their work. We may never know exactly how the glove maker's son from Stratford became the greatest writer in the English language, but we have the plays and the poems. We have the words that have shaped how we think about love, power, ambition, jealousy, and what it means to be human. In our next episode, we're going to dive into one of those plays, Romeo and Juliet, and explore how a story about teenage love became one of the most powerful explorations of fate, family, and social conflict ever written. We'll see how Shakespeare took an old Italian story and transformed it into something that speaks directly to our modern world. Thank you so much for joining me on this first journey into the Brit Lit Book Club. I hope I've convinced you that there's so much more to these classic authors than you might remember from school. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you that if you've ever dreamed of walking through Shakespeare's hometown, standing in a room where he was born or watching a play at the Reconstructed Globe Theater, that's exactly what we do on the Book Club tour. You can find out more at the book club tour.com. But for now, if you're inspired to dive deeper into the world we've explored today, I've got some fantastic book recommendations for you. For Shakespeare biography and mystery. Bill Bryson's Shakespeare. The world as stage is absolutely perfect. If you want to know more about the mysteries we discussed today, Bryson has this powerful way of making the gaps in our knowledge feel like an adventure rather than frustration. He's honest about what we don't know while painting a vivid picture of what we do. If you're intrigued by the authorship question, pick up Elizabeth Wrinkler. Shakespeare was a woman and other heretical ideas. Now, I'm not saying I believe the conspiracy theories, but Winkler raises fascinating questions about how we think about genius education and social class in Shakespeare's time. It's thought provoking. James Shapiro's 1599 is fantastic. If you want to understand how Shakespeare's world shaped his greatest works, it focuses on the single year he wrote. Henry, the v Julius Caesar, as You Like it, and Hamlet Shapiro knows how the political tensions and social changes of that specific moment influence these masterpieces for modern takes on Shakespeare. If you've enjoyed thinking about how Shakespeare's themes connected to our modern world, Jodi Ults by any other name is brilliant. It's a dual timeline novel that weaves together the story of a modern playwright discovering a Lost Shakespeare play with the story of Amelia Besano, a real woman who some believe influenced Shakespeare's work as part historical fiction, part feminist reclamation, and completely engaging. For a deeper dive into Elizabeth and history itself, I love Liza Pickards, Elizabeth London. She covers everything from what people ate to how they handled sewage. It's the kind of social history that makes you feel like you're walking through Shakespeare's London. And here's a fun one, if you want something lighter. The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt. It's technically a young adult novel, but it's about a seventh grader who has to spend Wednesday afternoons reading Shakespeare with his teacher. It's funny and moving, and it shows how these 400 year old plays still speak to us Today, next week, we're tackling Romeo and Juliet not as a simple love story, but as a complex exploration of how individual desire clashes with social expectations, it's going to be fascinating. Until then, keep reading, keep questioning, and remember, every time you say something is a wild goose chase or describe a situation as neither here nor there. You're speaking Shakespeare's words. The glove maker's son from Stratford is still shaping how we talk 400 years later. And if all this talk about Shakespeare has you dreaming of standing in his actual birthplace or watching a performance at the globe, well that's exactly the kind of literary adventure that made me start the book club tour in the first place. There's something magical about experiencing these stories in the places where they were born. That's pretty remarkable, isn't it? Well, my tea's getting cold, so until next time, keep reading and stay curious. Bye.