Hello and welcome to Talking Tudors, a fortnightly podcast about the ever fascinating Tudor dynasty. My name is Natalie Gruniga and I'll be your host and guide on this journey through 16th century England. Are you ready to step through the veil of time into the dazzling and dangerous world of the Tudor court? Without further ado, it's time to talk Tudors. [Music] Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Talking Tudors. I'm your host Natalie Gruniga. Thank you so much for joining me today. Before we begin, I'd like to mention an upcoming online event that I'm hosting called a bookish weekend with the Tudors. Over the weekend of the 28th and 29th of September, we'll explore 16th century printing, books and manuscripts through a series of six online lectures and one live Zoom discussion delivered by experts in this field. Joining me are Joe Saunders, Dr. Owen Emerson, Kate McCaffrey, Dr. Rebecca Kwosmore, Professor Martin Van Elk and Dr. Vanessa Wilke. This is unmissable for lovers of books and Tudor history. For details and to reserve your place, click on the link in the show notes or just Google a bookish weekend with the Tudors. I'd also like to acknowledge and thank the generous listeners who continue to support Talking Tudors on Patreon and extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who's taken the time to rate and review the show. As an independent podcaster, this means a lot to me. If you love the podcast, please consider joining the Talking Tudors Patreon community. Visit patreon.com/talkingtutors for more information. Once you sign up, you'll have access to exclusive posts, additional monthly life talks, a member only book club, patron only monthly giveaways to name just a few of the rewards. You can also support the podcast and share your love of Tudor history with the world by buying Talking Tudors merchandise. Check out all the products at talkingtutors.threadless.com. Now on to today's episode. I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Darren Freeberry Jones to the podcast to chat about his new book, Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers. Darren is author of the monographs, reading Robert Green, recovering Shakespeare's rival, Shakespeare's tutor, The Influence of Thomas Kidd, and Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers. He is Associate Editor for the first critical edition of The Collected Works of Thomas Kidd since 1901. He has also investigated the boundaries of John Marston's dramatic corpus as part of the Oxford Marston project, and is general editor for The Collected Plays of Robert Green. His findings on the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries have been discussed in national newspapers such as The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Observer and The Independent, as well as BBC Radio. His debut poetry collection, Rambling, was published in 2024. In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, in recognition of his contributions to historical scholarship. Let's dive straight into our conversation. Welcome to Talking Tudors, Darren. How are you? I'm great. Saw the batter for hearing you to how to phrase the big bad wolf. Thank you so much. It's so lovely to have you here. So let's start with an introduction. Would you mind just telling us and our wonderful listeners a little bit about you in your background? Yes, of course. So I'm a Welsh born author of books on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. And I'm associate editor for The Collected Works of Elizabethan playwright Thomas Kidd, and general editor for The Collected Plays of Robert Green. So I lecture and strap it upon Avon. And I'm also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Wonderful. And I was just saying to you before we started recording that I'm excited to talk about at Shakespeare, because I don't often get the chance. I'm always stuck with Henry VIII for some reason. So it's nice to get out of that period of Tudor history. So let's talk a little bit about your new book, very exciting, called Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers. Can you tell us a bit about it, and maybe what inspired you to write it? Well, I've long been interested in Shakespeare's contemporary playwrights, how he interacted with was sometimes influenced by and collaborated with other dramatists. And my PhD thesis at Cardiff and Wales was on Thomas Kidd's relationship with Shakespeare's early plays. And I wrote a book on that topic, published in 2022. And that year, I also wrote a book on fellow Elizabethan playwright Robert Green. So having written books on Shakespeare, Green and Kidd, I thought, you know what, I'll write a book on everybody. I'm being a little bit facetious there, but Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers chart Shakespeare's engagement with each major playwright of the period. Going back to the 1580s, up to Shakespeare's retirement around 1613. Wonderful. And so before we dive in to talk a little bit more about some of those relationships and influences that you've just mentioned, would you mind setting the scene for us a little? So maybe telling us about what we know of Shakespeare's early life, his education, his training, that sort of thing. Yeah, of course. Well, we don't have enrollment records for Shakespeare's Grammar School education. And this is also the case with other literary figures of the period. Like Robert Green, who I just mentioned, and an author named Thomas Decker. But it seems more than likely that Shakespeare would have attended King's New School, between the ages of around 7 and 14, which was just a short walk from his home in Henley Street, Stratford upon Avon. So King's New School was free for boys in the borough. And tradition holds that John Shakespeare bred his son for some time at a free school. And I think Shakespeare's education would have been more than robust enough to equip him with the knowledge and skill set he required to write poetry and plays, pretty much the equivalent of a modern classics degree. So schoolboys of the period would have studied Latin anthologies by the likes of the Dutch humanist Erasmus, as well as Esaup's fables through a Latin translation. And in the classroom, Shakespeare would also punch over the work. So classical writers, such as Terrence, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil. Now, Shakespeare, often regarded as the world's greatest playwright, isn't exactly renowned for coming up with his own plot lines. But it's worth stressing that he was writing during a period when emphasis was placed, not on telling new stories, necessarily, but wheats having existing stories in innovative ways. And this was reflected in the standard school curriculum instituted by Erasmus, for which imitation, parody, and translation served as bedrock. This was fundamentally education that prized imitation and advised students to read as many different types of authors as possible in order to fill up their storehouse. So pedagogical emphasis on bettering imitated sources, that would have been drilled into Shakespeare at school. They worked schoolboys pretty hard at the time. So Shakespeare would have been thoroughly immersed in classical rhetoric as well. So the language of persuasion. And I think this would have been a particular use to a budding actor dramatist. So figures of repetition would benefit Elizabethan actors when it came to learning lines, including long-to-clamatory speeches. And having a barge on a career as an actor in London at some point in the late 1580s or early 1590s, Shakespeare would have experienced training in rhetoric and memorization, not too dissimilar to his school lessons, I think. And that would inform his his dramatic writing when writing rules for himself and other members of his playing company. And as a sign that it's worth pointing out that schoolboys of the period would have acted out scenes from the works of tenants and plotists. So Shakespeare's relationship with drama might have started at a young age. And as I argue in Shakespeare's forum feathers, Shakespeare's rhetorical training and his background as an actor, they were fundamental to the development of his dramatic style. The trained habits of imitation was intrinsic to the composition of Shakespeare's plays. Now, I always remember I was doing a lecture tour in the United States. And after giving a talk about Shakespeare's works life and times, an American lady came up to me and she said, "Watch you think Shakespeare was really like?" And before I had a chance to answer, she said, "I think he was very opinionated. Take that exchange in what sense their will." And my response was that Shakespeare's works often display what I call an antithetical thought process. So he frequently weighs up competing arguments. And this is reflected in Shakespeare's language, in which one image tends to give birth to another, often diametrically opposed image with remarkable speed. And again, this goes back to his school days. So Erasmus was committed to teaching schoolboys to argue in Utramke Parton and what that means is voicing two sides of the question in the art of thought or controversy. And I think Shakespeare's reluctance to commit to particular ideologies or view points in his works, that accounts in part for why they're still studied and performed today. Because we can adapt Shakespeare just as he adapted the works of other writers. And people often try to pin down Shakespeare, the man himself, his thoughts, his opinions through his roles. But for me, the beauty of Shakespeare is that he's elusive. He embraces contrasting perspectives. He gives voice to very different characters. I think that's in part traceable to his background as an actor, accustomed to inhabiting different roles. Now, that's so fascinating. I think it is that sort of mysterious element about him that makes him so appealing to so many people in so many different countries around the world. It's so interesting. And you talked there, Darren, you mentioned that, of course, at some point, he does go to London to become an actor and to play right. Do we know when he first gets there or when is he first mentioned in the sources? Yeah, we think he gets to London around the late 1580s to early 1590s. But the first reference to Shakespeare as an act of dramatists in London could be considered something of a bad review. So it comes from a 1592 pamphlet, attributed to fellow playwright Robert Green. And that pamphlet's title, Green's Grugsworth and Wits, bought with a million of repentance. And in it, Green warns fellow university educated dramatists against actors, those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths, those antics garnished in our colors. And one actor in particular, because Shakespeare or Shek Seem, as he starred in the pamphlet, has had the audacity to turn his hand to writing plays, despite being a non-university educated actor. So Green writes, "There is an upstart row beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's eye, suppose as he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute johannus-back totem, so a jack of all trades, is in his own conceit, the only Shek Seem in a country." Now, the pamphlet is open to various interpretations when it comes to meeting authorship, even its targets. But for me, the Green's Grugsworth and Wits passage chimes with Green's combativeness with actors in general. And maybe Shakespeare was able to beautify himself in other playwrights feathers, because he delivered their words on stage. He gained first-hand experience of what worked for audiences in terms of language, verse, and dramatic devices. And I think it gave Shakespeare an advantage, and I think it tannies with the emphasis on imitation in grammes school education of the period. Shakespeare was able to borrow the stylistic feathers from plays he's acting in, or maybe he's heard in performance, and he was able to do something fresh with them. Yeah, and before we go on to talk a little bit more about other playwrights at the time and his influences, could you tell us a little bit about what the London that Shakespeare moved to, you know, late 1580s, early 1590s, was actually life? Yeah, I think it must have been a brave new world for Shakespeare, traveling from a relatively small market town strapped up on Avon to the centre. And when Shakespeare appeared on the scene, there were around 180,000 people residing in London. So it must have been exciting, bustling, but also potentially dangerous. So dramatists would find plenty of material to inspire their works in London, especially those dabbling in tragic matters. So crossing London bridge, you'd have the eyes of traitorous heads, preserved in tar, and impaled on spikes, gazing down at you. That's a pretty hefty warning for writers, I think, to avoid politicising. And death was everywhere, particularly in the form of the plague, which often forced theatre closures. And you'd hear strange screams of death in the city, as well as the roars of entertained crowds watching bearbaiting, so a pack of dogs attacking a bear tied to a stake, and sometimes a ball was sacrificed instead of a bear. And we know on a couple of occasions, a chimpanzee was strapped to a horse's saddle, and audiences found it highly entertaining, watching this poor monkey clinging on for dear life. Now, if Londoners didn't fancy cruel blood spots, like bearbaiting or cockfighting, they could pay just a penny, which would venture a loaf of bread at the time, to watch public executions. But theatre was also a thriving entertainment industry, with around 15 to 20% of the London population going to watch plays. And what academic estimates that they will win over 30 acting companies, playing their trades between 1598 and 1616? So this was the world Shakespeare entered, and the culture he absorbed, and contributed to. So tell us a little bit about some of those other playwrights that are there at the same time as Shakespeare. Yeah, so there's so many tremendous playwrights working in London at the time. When Shakespeare first appears on the scene, you've got John Lilly, writing plays performed by children, often for Queen Elizabeth. And his dramas feature cross-dressing headowins, battles of wit, lots of song, or all elements we later find in Shakespeare's comedies. Now, the main dramatist writing for the public theatres are Thomas Kidd and Christopher Marlowe. These are the big hitters producing hugely popular plays, such as Kidd's The Spanish Tragedy, veritable box office hits, The Gone With The Winds, The Titanic, and The Early Modern Periods. And they're revolutionizing traumatic language. Marlowe's verse is mighty. It's it's bombastic, especially in the in the tumbling plays, about a Scythian shepherd who rises to become a conqueror. Have you seen the film Shakespeare in Love, Natalie? I have, yes, yes. So you won't remember, there's a scene where Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe meet up in the pub. And Christopher Marlowe turns to Shakespeare and says, "What are you working on at the moment?" And Shakespeare very proudly says, "I'm working on a very exciting play called Romeo and Ethel, the pirate's daughter." He says, "What are you working on kids?" And Marlowe just responds, "The massacre at Paris." And Shakespeare just sighs endlessly. So, Kidd and Marlowe, they're working on dark tragedies. You don't get much darker than a dramatization of the 1572 barthorm you think they massacre. But they're also experimenting with genre. They're mixing comic and tragic elements. Now, as Shakespeare's career progresses, genres like courtly masks and city comedies are flourishing. And we can see those genres in the works by writers such as Thomas Middleton, Thomas Decker, and Ben Johnson. Johnson in particular is a very interesting prickly figure of the period. So he was a friend of Shakespeare's, and I don't know about you, but I tend to find that my best friend say worst things about me than my worst enemies. So, Johnson has something of a banterous relationship with Shakespeare. For instance, having heard that Shakespeare really deleted a line in his plays, Johnson famously wished he blotted a thousand. But he also said he loved Shakespeare, that he worshiped him, this side idolatry, and that Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time. So we know that Shakespeare acted in Ben Johnson's comedy, Every Man in His Humour in 1598, and his tragedy, Sir Janus in 1603. And if the testimony of Stratford, upon even Bicker, John Ward is to believe, Johnson was one of the last people Shakespeare ever saw. So apparently Shakespeare and Johnson had a merry meeting, and it seems tramped too hard for Shakespeare dying to have a fever dead and contracted. I find it curiously comforting the idea of the world's greatest playwright dying of a really bad hangover. Now, Shakespeare and Johnson's friendship might have succeeded, not because of their similarities, but rather their complementarity. So in many respects, they were opposites when it came to approaching drama. Johnson was a keen advocate of neoclassical dramaturgy, so he placed a lot of emphasis on the unities of time, place, and action, to all of us taking place in single locations, over a period of around three hours, and with a single plot. And this is an approach largely rejected by Shakespeare, with the exceptions of his plays, the comedy of errors, and the temp pests. So Johnson tends to stick to the idea of comic reanism as an imitation of life. And Shakespeare's plays, on the other hand, tend to switch settings and mingle comic and tragic elements, plus, I'm sub-glots. When our Shakespeare's imagination often travels abroad, with around a third of his plays set in Italy, for example, Johnson's plays tend to recall London, even when they're not set in that city. So I think Johnson was developing self-aware dramas, representative of a sprawling metropolis society. They were two great dramaturge Shakespeare and Johnson. They were friends, but they were also very different in their outlook. And so tell us a little bit more, Darren, about how Shakespeare actually engages with this community of actors, playwrights, and I suppose, with the plays of some of the other dramaturists working at the time. Well, first up, as an actor dramaturge, Shakespeare would have acted in the plays of other writers. So I mentioned Thomas Kidd earlier, several of his plays are associated with Penbrook's men, which I think is likely the company Shakespeare started off with. And as I mentioned, we know Shakespeare's been acting in some of Johnson's plays, because the 1616 folio edition of Johnson's Works tells us so. It's worth thinking of Shakespeare as an entertainer, a bit like Robin Williams, because theatre was a business enterprise. It was designed to make money through entertaining and engaging audiences. And there was lots of duplication going on between companies who were keeping close eyes on what is proving popular with audiences. So the history plays on, for example, is hugely popular. And it's been estimated that around a third of plays, surviving plays of the period feature battle scenes. So battle scenes, highly entertaining for audiences. And Shakespeare sometimes goes back to older plays, but for new audiences. A good example would be Shakespeare's King John. And for that play, he seems to have had a copy of an older play attributed to a university educated writer named George Peele, titled The Troublesome Rain of King John, at Shakespeare's elbow on his writing desk. And another older play, an anonymous play, is the famous victories of Henry V, which recounts Prince House while messing his youth, his victory at Ashen Court against all odds, and his marriage to Catherine Abewa. It's a real rollercoaster drama. And it isn't even that long a play. So Shakespeare gets three plays for the price of one out of it. His two Henry V plays and Henry V. So I think there's a bit of an idea, Darren, that when we think about Shakespeare actually writing, that he's at his desk, he's by himself, he's got his quill, you know, he's there, you know, working away. Do we know anything about his actual writing practice or anything along these lines? Yeah. So, so chiefly, Shakespeare does seem to have written alone. So yeah, you can imagine him toiling at his writing desk, aren't you, later at night when this thing is blotted with ink. But but he also seems to have collaborated with other playwrights largely at the beginning and near the end of his career. So I argue that early Shakespeare plays like Titus Andronicus and the reign of King Edward III, what we might call all four docs collaborations. So you've got dramatists working from a shared plot outline and Gomoth and writing their respective stints. And this also seems to be the case with later collaborations, like pedicles, timing of Athens, heavy the eighth we mentioned earlier, and the two noble kinsmen. So by my count, Shakespeare seems to have had a hand in over 40 plays, around a dozen of which can be considered authorial collaborations in some ways. And then it appeared to be different ways of working. But for solo plays, a dramatist would usually conceive an author plot with detailed stage action, which characters are on stage per scene, what happens. And these plots were using based on sources like phonical history, Italian novellas and so on. And playwrights would then copy out the finished play or pay a professional scribe to provide what's called a perfect copy, which would be submitted to the playing company. And so once you've got this play in your hand, how then do you go about working with theatre managers and getting it actually performed or working with the actors? What's that process like? Well, we get some interesting insights into our playwrights and theatre companies work together in letters kept by the garbage college library. And these letters were exchanged between a theatre manager named Philip Henslow and a dramatist named Robert Dayborne in 1613 to 14. So Dayborne agreed to supply Henslow with instalments of a play titled Machiaveille and the Devil between April and May 1613. And he was paying £6 as an advance. And he would have the other £4 upon delivery of 3x and the other £10 upon delivery of the last scene perfected. So totalling £20 for the complete play. So we learn here that Dayborne was commissioned by Acts and that the theatre manager Henslow expected him to transcribe his original drafts as a perfect or fair copy or at least commission a professional scribe himself. We also learned one of Dayborne's letters that he was expected to read his play to the general company. And this suggests that dramatists were closely with actors during the composition of their plays. And even when their plays were finished and they'd likely need to take account of any criticisms or feedback they received from the company of players. Now unfortunately Dayborne kept delaying the submission of the fair copied play while asking Henslow for more money. Which annoy Henslow so much that he threatened to bring a suit for breach of promise. And Dayborne eventually delivered an incomplete fair copy along with a sheet from his draft dinner of foul papers which he'd been interrupting the process of copying out by the very associative Henslowes who'd come to collect the completed play. So Dayborne promised to write the sheet to one or more pages fair and perfect the book. Sending the sheet to the shortens that work on the play was practically complete. These letters suggest pressures for speeding us when it came to dramatic writing. In order to keep theatre managers and their company supplied with material. It's been estimated actually that the composition of a play took approximately six weeks. And the theatre company would then own the play, not the author, and they would produce several documents from it such as prompt books or queue scripts for the actors. Each of whom would only receive their own lines and the last couple of words from preceding speeches. I think it must have been quite intense, quite a spontaneous experience putting on a play during the time because we think that companies of actors would only have around three weeks to rehearse a play, even a big hitter like Hamlet's. And they're performing multiple plays around six days a week. That sounds absolutely exhausting, I think. And you mentioned that they obviously took feedback quite seriously and we're always looking out for what was popular with audiences. So does this mean then that plays were altered after they were performed? Do we have evidence of that? Or that they were perhaps adapted even for specific audiences? So maybe Elizabeth's coming to watch. Are you going to ensure that there's nothing that's going to make a cranky in there? Yes, absolutely. So theatrical revision was common place during the early modern periods. For example, we know the writer John Webster was commissioned by the Kingsman playing company, so headed up by James the First, to add an induction to an revised scenes of a play by the writer John Masters and called them out content. And we know that Ben Johnson was not only called upon to revise other men's plays, but also thoroughly revised his own. It kind of reminds me of Star Wars a little bit when George Lucas added scenes and special effects to the original trilogy in 1997. So you had viewers attending cinema screenings of these adaptations and they continued to purchase them in media such as DVD, Blu-ray, or Disney Plus nowadays. And I think early modern audiences, like modern movie fans, they'd attend revivals of older plays, taking comfort in the fact that they were going to hear and see something familiar, but also being enticed by the proposition of a new spin on an old classic. So just as George Lucas sought to adapt his franchise in light of improvements in special effects, playing companies might seem to adapt older plays according to shifting theatrical millions, advances in stagecraft, venues, changes in company personnel, and changing audience expectations. And there are theories that Shakespeare revised his own plays, such as the Tempest, for example, for a performance to celebrate the marriage of James the First daughter, Elizabeth, to Prince Frederick of Bohemia. And also Shakespeare seems to have gotten in trouble with the Cobham family by presenting the historical figure of Sir John Oldcastle in the Henry IV plays and the many lives of Windsor. So the epilogue to Henry IV part two stresses that Oldcastle was a Protestant martyr and that John Folster, the gluttonous Braggart Knight in Shakespeare's plays, is not the same man. So the evidence there suggests Shakespeare actually changed the name of the character from Oldcastle to Folster. And Shakespeare also seems to have revised the plays of other dramatists in works like the Spanish tragedy and playing known as Henry VI part one in his 1623 first folio. But sometimes Shakespeare's plays were revised by other writers. So for instance some scholars believe the author Thomas Middleton adapted Shakespeare's Macbeth, his measure for measure and his play always well that ends well. And with Macbeth we have a real rarity. We have an eyewitness account of a performance at the Globe Playhouse on the 20th of April 1611 by the astrologer Simon Foreman. So very rare to get eyewitness accounts of Shakespeare plays during his lifetime. And Foreman describes the weird sisters as fairies or nymphs. So quite different to that the midnight act with skinny lips and choppy fingers that we all know and love. Foreman's description more closely resembles how the weird sisters are described in Shakespeare's source material Raphael Hollenshedt's Chronicles as well as an entertainment poem before King James of Oxford in August 1605 where the king was greeted by three symbols. Now we can't be sure but Foreman's account presents the possibility I think that the text of Macbeth included in the collection of 36 Shakespeare plays. The first folio doesn't fully represent the version originally performed in Shakespeare's lifetime. So Macbeth is around 30% shorter than other tragedy Shakespeare wrote at the time like Coriolanus, Anthony Cleopatra and King Lear. So this strikes me as a good example of theatrical revision. Oh I wonder what we're missing now. I want to know. I love Macbeth, that's one of my favourite plays. So you've given us some examples already Darren of how Shakespeare was influenced by the contemporary playwright and how he used early works. You know you said he had it there on his writing desk as his writing. Can you give us a few more of those sort of concrete examples if we have them? Have he being influenced by other playwrights? Yeah I think we can see influence in Shakespeare's dramatic language. So his early plays we'd like patch works of phrases that you'd also find in the plays of Thomas Kidd, Christopher Marlowe and that Oxford educated dramatist I mentioned earlier George Peel. And the evidence I've uncovered in the book suggests that Shakespeare becomes less imitative when it comes to dramatic language as his career progresses. So some phrases might have been recycled unconsciously through having acted in a play or seen a play performance. While other lines like the papa jades of Asia seem to be parodic. So that line is delivered by Marlowe's conqueror tambourine when he's riding a chariot drawn by captives being treated like horses with bits in their mouths. And Shakespeare puts the line in the mouth of ancient pistol character who frequently recycles and often butches to be honest. Phrases that were popular in the theatrical vernacular of the periods. Ancient pistol appears in the Henry IV, Henry V plays in the many Rives of Windsor. And another good example of Shakespeare being influenced by the playwrights can be seen in Thomas Kidd's The Spanish Tragedy. So that's the first revenge tragedy on the English public stage. And it features a ghost crying for revenge play within a play and a murder victim in a garden plot. And these are all elements we see in Shakespeare's Hamlet. And it's worth pointing out that Kidd has been suspected of writing an older now lost Hamlet play. So I'll just give you some of the evidence for Thomas Kidd's authorship of this lost Hamlet play that served as a source for Shakespeare. So you have the pamphlets here in playwright Thomas Nash attacking Kidd in his preface to Robert Greene's pamphlet, Menophon. And Kidd, like Shakespeare, didn't have a university education. So he was also open to criticism from the so-called university wits. So Nash alludes to the Kidd in Esop, another dodgy pen, a bit like Robert Greene's shake scene, who has left the trade of noverence. So meaning a professional scribe, and now medals with Italian translations, as Kidd had done with his translation of talkative tasks. So it was Padre de Familia in a work called The Householders Philosophy. And Kidd's father was a professional scribe, by the way, or by sort of the court letter. Now Nash claims that Kidd bleeds the work of Roman tragedy and Seneca, line by line, in order to afford you whole hamlet. And he mocks the opening of Kidd's the Spanish tragedy in particular, because Kidd thrusts Elysium into hell during the ghost account of his descent into the lower world. And Nash also claims that Kidd is prone to bodge up a blank verse with ifs and ands, which padades aligned from the Spanish tragedy. What rhythm, ifs and ands? So here, Nash is mocking Kidd's reliance on the works of Seneca, who very much saw as his tragic ancestor. So Seneca was responsible for tragic plays like the madness of Hercules, definition women, and Agamen none. And Kidd draws from Seneca and elements that had been seen, especially in courtly English tragedies, like ghosts, bettering for revenge, bloody violence, that that kind of thing. But Kidd refines Roman tragedy for the English public stage. Now we know that unlike all of Shakespeare's sources, this lost hamlet play featured a ghost. So that's a really important innovation that, of course, had a major impact on Shakespeare's play. And according to the theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslow's diary, that old hamlet play was performed at a theatre called Newington Butts in June 1594. And two years after the record of its performance, you had a poet and dramatist named Thomas Lodge alluding to the play in a pamphlet titled "Wits Misery." So Lodge writes of, "The visit of the ghost which cried so miserably at the theatre like an oyster-like hamlet revenge." So the fact that the play to which the arguably most famous work in English literature shakes his hamlet is heavily indebted and was likely written by Thomas Kidd says much for his influence on Shakespeare's drama, I think. And by the time Shakespeare wrote hamlets around 1600s, revenge tragedy had gone a bit stale as a genre. And it might sound amazing to us today, given how hugely popular a work it is. The writer Kamlet was something of a familiar show risk for Shakespeare, and he goes back to the revenge tragedies, the viewer by earlier playwrights for inspiration. It's amazing. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know that about Hamlet at all. So interesting. So if you had to summarize then, Darren, the influences, the greatest influences on Shakespeare's style, what would you say to that? Yes, yes, bounded in a nutshell. Again, I think I think Kidd for me was probably the greatest influence on Shakespeare's dramatic style. So most of the university educated playwrights from Shakespeare first comes on the scene. They've stuck to 10 syllable verse lines, so five unstressed syllables, five stressed syllables, de-dum de-dum de-dum. A lot of us are taught in school that it sounds like a human heartbeat. Others might say that's de-dumbing it down, but Kidd's verse is very different. So he often adds an extra unstressed syllable, the so-called feminine ending. And the most famous example in literature would be Hamlet's to be or not to be. That is the question. So that term is an 11th unstressed syllable. And in terms of this more flexible verse style that we see in Kidd, and also Shakespeare's habit of compounding words, so putting words together in forms like eye offending, bunchbacked, and muddy metaled, as well as phrases that Shakespeare recycles from other plays. I think early Shakespeare's style is closer to fellow non-university educated playwright Thomas Kidd, than his other greatest influence, which would be Christopher Marnall, I think. And I'm sure many of our listeners have, of course, heard that there are debates when it comes to, you know, authorship and Shakespeare, and that there are some people that think he didn't write any of the plays himself. So can you sort of get us up to date on what the current authorship debates are in the world of Shakespeare? Yes, yes. As you know, there's quite a few, aren't there? The authorship of the Henry VI plays is hotly contested. So some scholars are like Christopher Tamalo had a hand in them. And I go into significant detail in Shakespeare's moral feathers as to why I don't think the internal or historical evidence supports that conclusion. In any case, the Henry VI trilogy is brilliant. It works brilliantly on stage. It's an epic of Game of Thrones proportions. Minus the Dragons and the disappointing season finale. There's also a true life crun drama titled "Arden of Babisham". That like seems to have been written earlier than any of Shakespeare's plays. And it seizes on the sensational cakes of a former mayor of Babisham and Kent, named Thomas Arden, who was butchered in his home by hired assassins, his own wife, and her bit on the side, on Valentine's Day 1551. Some modern scholars argue that Shakespeare had a hand in that play, which is dated to the late 1580s to early 1590s. But as I try and show in the book, the evidence points overwhelmingly towards Thomas Kidd's soul authorship. And Chimes, I think, with the patterns of borrowing we see between other plays associated with kids and Shakespeare's later dramas, that there are also arguments as to whether Shakespeare acted as a reviser or collaborated directly in plays such as Titus Andronicus. So Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's earliest tragedy. And it's one of my favourite plays, which probably says a lot about me, it's bonkers. I like to refer to it as the printing Tarantino movie of the Shakespeare canon. It's got mutilation to capitation, and it ends with a mother being tricked into eating her own sons, who have been baked in a pie. So 14 deaths in Titus Andronicus is a really bloody tragedy. And this is a collaboration between Shakespeare and George Peel, that Scott is often writes about Shakespeare salvaging a plate by Peel, maybe finishing off a draft of hits in Titus Andronicus. And that disqualification of Peel is worthy of collaborating directly with Shakespeare, flaps the historical evidence, I think, because Shakespeare would have learned a great deal from his more experienced co-author and hugely popular dramatist. So I see Shakespeare and Peel working on that play in a process of simultaneous collaboration. And I am to show in the book how that method of working can account for some of the mysteries still surrounding that play. Well, you've certainly given us a lot to think about when it comes to Shakespeare and his work. So thank you. There is another thing we do on talking tutors when I first have guests on for the first time. And that is what I call tend to go. So these are just 10 questions just to get to know you a little bit better. So the first one I have for you is do you have a favourite historic site might be one associated with Shakespeare that you like to visit? Oh, good question. Yeah, I think I get in big trouble if I didn't say Stratford upon Eve and when I work, particularly Henley Street, the sites of the birthplace. Yeah, that is a fantastic place to visit. And what about the last book that you read or perhaps one that you're currently reading? Yeah, so I don't get a lot of opportunities to read fiction really. So what I've been doing is chipping away on Kindle on my phone when my eldest son, my five year olds, Oliver is at swimming lessons with William Peter Blattie's horror novel Legion, which is a sequel to The Exorcist. But the most of my reading time is taken up with with looking at academic works. And I'm also reading a present and Paul Menza's Shakespeare A Brief Life, which is a really witty and fascinating biography of Shakespeare. Oh, that does sound good. And what about when you're in writing mode and you are writing, do you have any kind of rituals that you like to follow? Yes, I do a lot of my writing by Candlelight, to be honest, whenever it's gone to bed. So I find that my thinking about how to shape certain sentences, certain paragraphs, that that's almost going on unconsciously throughout the day. And then I've got that short window of opportunity. Everyone's gone to bed. And then I am just hamming away at the keys on my laptop, which is, I think Shakespeare probably wrote a lot of his plays at like time, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a ritual because it leads to really awful insomnia. And I remember when I wrote the book on Robert Greene, I just spent around six months of barely getting any sleep because once I kind of hit the pillow, I was still thinking, oh my gosh, I need to crack footnote 46 and that kind of thing. Oh, I like the Candlelight idea though. That's very tutor of you there, Darren. What about an ideal Sunday morning? What does that kind of consist of? ideal Sunday morning. I think in a fantasy world, it would be a lion because in order to be able to get walking a by my five-year-old or my 18-month-old boy as well. But I think, yeah, nice relaxing morning and then nationally, making our way out of the house and undertaking some kind of family activity. So maybe a walk in the park with the family. Yeah, that sounds lovely. And is there a new skill that you would like to learn? So my eldest Oliver is going to, he goes to a school which is an all Welsh-speaking school. So he's encouraged to speak Welsh in the classroom, in the playground. And I always remember I was at a meal before giving a talk on Shakespeare and Kingship and I was talking to this lady about my oldest and she said, "Oh, are you worried that that's going to impact his skills when it comes to English and the English language?" And my response to that was that Shakespeare was encouraged to speak Latin at all times in school and even at home. And he was pretty good at English, I think. So I would love to learn another language. We were hoping that with Oliver learning Welsh, we would pick up on certain words, certain phrases. It would depend upon our own Welsh-speaking skills. But he's kind of progressed from speaking the odd Welsh words and now just rattling off fluent Welsh. And I think he's so, so far ahead of us that we don't have much chance. I always love studying French at school. I find that such a fascinating, beautiful, rhythmic language. So yeah, if I had the time, I think that's what I would love to do. I'd love to learn another language. Maybe French or probably more usefully for me Welsh. I love languages as well. And I think children, they're such sponges, aren't they? You could literally teach them five languages and they would learn all five languages. So, you know, I don't think there's any worry that he's not going to know how to speak English, that's for sure. So how do you find or where do you find inspiration? That's a good question. Where do I find inspiration? I think I'm often inspired by reading the works of non-schick's billion dramatists. And my inspiration kind of comes from seeing what inspired Shakespeare. So I guess just reading as widely as possible. And I'm inspired by hearing different authorial voices, different styles. That's something that really fascinates me. And what about, let's turn our attention to travel. I love to travel. So I like to ask people about their favorite travel destinations, perhaps somewhere that you haven't been that you would like to visit. Yes. I think it's top of my bucket list would probably be Japan. So, so maybe Tokyo. And I've always really wanted to go to Florida, but specifically Universal Studios. So I remember as a kid obsessed with Jurassic Park and Jaws. And I think it's changed quite a bit since watching old videos of Universal Studios now, but I still love to go there. Wonderful. And what about a favorite season? Do you have one? And why? Yes. Yes. So I'm not autumnal in my album. I'm very much a sunny bunny. I love the summer. I do. I do really like September, because I think it has long felt like a time of change for me, September. So going back to university days, that's when the new term would start. I think, yeah, summer and September specific reason. Yeah, I have to say September is beautiful. Anyway, like I've traveled a lot and we tend to travel a lot in September. It's lovely here in Australia, Southern Hemisphere, but it's beautiful in the Northern Hemisphere as well. So I think it's a good, a good trouble time. So when you were a child, Darren, what did you hope to be when you, when you grew up? Yeah, you've only got the impression I was quite an odd child, which I was. I, I wanted to be a paleontologist. There's, there's a lot of little boys who are obsessed with dinosaurs would say. And I had the nickname Dino Darren for a long time. So, well, well, lots of kids, you know, into dinosaurs. I took it quite far. And we'd be out for a meal, me and my parents. And apparently I would just wander off between tables and start lecturing people on dinosaurs. I would tell them about, you know, the procom salt methods, the brachiosaurus, that kind of thing. So which is not too far removed from what I do now. So it's, so I'm a lecturer, just, just not, not on dinosaur. And on sign. And then as I, I wanted to be a rugby player. Okay. For a period. So rugby is an intrinsic part of our DNA in Wales, even though we're quite awful at it at the moment, but I got, we'll, we'll get back to form. And then I wanted to become an actor. So, so I, I still continue to do quite a bit of acting on the side. So I guess those, those interests and those kind of dreams when it came to what occupational items to take. A lot of them form part of my current role as a lecturer on Shakespeare. Apart from the rugby, I don't get much opportunity to tackle people to the ground these days. No. Well, I think teachers and lecturers are kind of always performing, aren't they? Yes. Yeah. You're right. You're absolutely right. And lucky last question, what do you like to do then to relax and unwind? You're obviously very busy. Yeah. This is a troubling one because for me, it's the writing process can be quite relaxing, but it is also the most stressful thing you can do. So yeah, there's, there's something about sitting down and, and, and creating. Yeah. I find that quite relaxing, but, but also, you know, like, like I said, quite a stressful thing to you. But sometimes, and quite really, I just need to put some garbage on the television and just not think about Shakespeare and his contemporaries. But I always remember we, I was running a course on Shakespeare, and it was, you know, quite, quite a week jumping between different talks and so forth. And I was driving back to my home and Cardiff, and I, I pulled that, but I said, you know what, that's been quite the week. And I just want to take a couple of days and not talk or think about Shakespeare, whatsoever this weekend. So I opened my front door and all of them, my, my eldest run up to me. And the first thing he said was, daddy, why did Shakespeare use a quell pen? So instantly, I was, I was back in lecture mode. You never asked me how Shakespeare was just so ironic. So funny, yeah, typical that it would happen at that moment. And I said that was the last question, but I have one more thing. And that is our tutor takeaway. So I like to ask my guests for something for our listeners, perhaps to go off and explore after the episode. So do you have a tutor takeaway for us? Yeah, I definitely encourage listeners to, to check out some of the works of Shakespeare's better playwrights. So there are new additions of the works of Thomas Cage, John Fletcher, and forthcoming additions of writers like Thomas Nash, John Marston, and Robert Greene. So yeah, check out these, these other rights is because you'll develop an understanding, I think, that Shakespeare was not the only playwright in town. And there were so many tremendous playwrights. And they were working in a broad and brilliant community. It sounds amazing. I love it. And I encourage everyone to, to grab a copy of your book, if they can, if they want to learn more about what we've been discussing. And Darren, thank you so much for taking the time to talk tutors with us. You're an absolute pleasure and privilege. Thank you so much, Natalie. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Talking Tutors. Thank you so much for joining us. I absolutely love to hear from listeners. So if you have any comments or suggestions or just want to say hi, please get in touch with me via my website, www.onthetutotrail.com, where you'll also find show notes for today's episode. If you've enjoyed the show, please share the podcast with friends and family, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. I also invite you to join our Talking Tutors podcast group on Facebook, where you can interact with other Tutor history lovers and hear all the behind the scenes news. You'll also find me on Twitter. My handle is on the Tutor Trail and on Instagram as the most happy 78. It's time now for us to re-end the modern world. As always, I look forward to talking tutors with you again very soon. [Music]
