Books on manners became so popular during the Elizabethan period that it was only a matter of time before someone satirized them.
“Manners maketh man” was the motto of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Would your own table manners pass inspection?
Shakespeare’s plays are full of battles dominated by men, but one of his most compelling speeches about the life of a soldier comes from a woman: Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part 1, speaking to her husband, Hotspur.
When Hamlet first encounters his father’s ghost, the Danish prince’s reactions reflect Shakespeare’s understanding of the theological differences between early modern Catholics and Protestants regarding the spiritual realm, says David Scott Kastan.
Transparencies, popular in the late 1700s, use back-lighting to reveal a secret image. See one from the Folger collection that reveals Shakespeare’s ghost in Westminster Abbey.
Illustrated editions of the Complete Works would have been the first encounter with Shakespeare that many Victorian readers would have had.
