The Tower today
- Intro
- About this site
- Copyright
- Life
- "All the world's a stage"
- Fast facts about Shakespeare
- Shakespeare's childhood
- Facts and Legends
- Shakespeare's baptism
- The Birthplace
- The Birthplace (2)
- The Birthplace (3)
- Shakespeare's family
- Shakespeare's schooling
- The schoolroom
- School at Stratford-on-Avon
- Reading and writing
- Styles of handwriting
- The writer's tools
- Grammar school
- Shakespeare's Youth
- Courtship and marriage
- Marriage: speculation
- Married life
- The Shakespeare family
- The "lost years"
- Character assassination?
- The upstart crow
- An attack on Shakespeare
- The attack retracted
- The early plays
- Experimental plays
- A patron, poems, a plot
- Dedication and friendship
- More about the patron
- The plot thickens
- An ambiguous dedication
- Characters in the Sonnets
- Bare, ruined choirs . . .
- Back to facts
- A comedy of errors
- Popularity and publication
- Shakespeare's early maturity
- The fourth age: plays
- Bad news and good news
- A gentleman born
- A major purchase in Stratford
- The first rave review
- Shakespeare's maturity
- The fifth age: plays
- Shakespeare, actor
- A scandal?
- Treasonous plots
- The death of Elizabeth I
- A royal patron: James I
- Last years in London
- The sixth age: plays
- An eyewitness to the plays
- Forman sees The Winter's Tale
- Death and birth
- Shakespeare's income
- Shakespeare in retirement
- The seventh age: plays
- A country gentleman
- A spectacular opening
- A pitiful ballad
- Shakespeare's death
- Death by misadventure?
- Will's will
- Shakespeare's will
- Anne's inheritance
- Stage
- Early Plays and Stages
- The mystery plays
- A street play
- Staging a morality play
- Staging a morality play (2)
- Moral costumes
- Puppet shows
- The public theater
- The stage: evidence
- The inn-yard as theater
- More inn yards
- The Swan
- The Rose
- The excavation of the Rose
- A generic theater
- Vice and sedition
- The City and the theaters
- The first Globe
- A reconstruction
- The Fortune Theater
- The second Globe
- Entrances and exits
- Discoveries
- "Above" and "below"
- The New Globe
- The private theater
- Drama at Court
- Staging in noble households
- The first Blackfriars Theatre
- Two private stages
- The second Blackfriars theatre
- The title-page to The Wits
- Inigo Jones designs a stage
- The masque
- Early masques
- From dance to drama
- Elaborate staging
- Inigo Jones
- The antimasque
- Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones
- An indecorous masque
- High jinks at court
- Stage designs by Jones
- More stage designs
- Costumes in the masque
- Staging the plays
- Scenes from early plays
- The Spanish Tragedy
- Shakespeare performed
- The stage: evidence
- Special effects
- More special effects
- Music in the plays
- Staging a scene
- The parts of the stage
- The characters
- The scene animated
- Acting and performing
- The companies
- The sharers
- The players
- Hamlet's advice to the players
- More advice to the players
- Overacting parodied
- Shakespeare's Actors (1)
- The First Folio lists the actors
- Shakespeare's Actors (2)
- Shakespeare's Actors (3)
- Child Actors
- Rival companies
- The Lord Chamberlain's Men
- The Admiral's Men
- Edward Alleyn
- Costumes and props
- Elizabethan fashions
- Fashion and colour
- Women's clothes
- Ruffs and hairstyles
- Stage costumes
- Exotic costumes
- Conventions and symbols
- Town and country
- Stage properties
- More props
- Structures on the stage
- The stage at Court
- The audience
- Shakespeare's audiences
- A puritan's view
- Notorious audience members
- A satirical view
- Dekker continues
- Society
- Country life
- Country fairs
- Village celebrations
- Huswifery
- The housewife's duties
- The advice continues. . .
- The plan of a farmhouse
- In sickness and in health
- Distillation
- Childbirth
- A christening
- The Birth of the Virgin
- Women and kitchens
- Preparing food
- More recipes
- Diet: food as medicine
- The dairy
- The yard
- A design for a garden
- Flax and hemp
- To market, to market
- Market Purchases
- Economic importance
- Husbandry
- Spring
- Sowing. . .
- ... and breeding
- Summer
- Stinking idols?
- Making hay
- Autumn: the harvest
- Threshing
- Winter
- A Winter diet
- Seasons awry: famine
- Land enclosures
- Country sports: hunting
- Falconry and hawking
- Fishing
- Archery and other sports
- Arch puns
- The family
- The age of marriage
- The marriage ceremony
- WeddingCelebration
- The wife's status
- Children
- A family dinner
- City life
- The City of London
- The procession in full
- London: streets and bridges
- A procession
- Districts within London
- London Bridge
- The cost of living
- Coins and money
- The marketplace
- Fish market
- Guilds
- The Guild System
- Various trades
- A knife sharpener
- Bakers
- Cooks
- A Water-carrier
- Brewing beer
- Tapsters and drawers
- Wine-merchants
- The weaver
- The dyer
- An armourer
- Labourer
- The life of a soldier
- Join the army
- Begging and vagrancy
- Compassion
- Bedlam: madness
- Madness
- Outsiders: black
- Outsiders: Jewish
- A tavern meal
- Gambling
- A bawdy-house
- City sports: bear-baiting
- The Paris Garden
- Bull-baiting
- The sewers of London
- The plague
- Death and mortality
- Court life
- The Office of the Revels
- Banquets
- Festivals
- A marriage feast
- Tournaments (1)
- Tournaments (2)
- The Duel
- The code of honour
- Religion challenged
- The ideal courtier
- Jesters and fools
- Court politics
- Court fashions
- History
- Legend and early history
- King Lear
- Cymbeline
- Shakespeare's Rome (1)
- Shakespeare's Rome (2)
- Julius Caesar
- Brutus and Cassius
- Stoics and Epicureans
- Antony and Cleopatra
- Amleth/Hamlet
- Macbeth
- The history of the Histories
- Two chronologies
- Shakespeare's sources
- Early kings (1)
- Early kings (2)
- Richard Lionheart
- King John
- Richard II
- Richard's downfall
- Peasants' revolutions
- A rebellion defused
- Jack Cade
- Monarchs of the Histories
- The dynastic jigsaw
- Henry IV
- Henry IV (2)
- Henry IV (3)
- Henry V
- The real Falstaff
- Henry VI
- Henry VI (2)
- Wars of the Roses (1)
- Wars of the Roses (2)
- Joan of Arc
- Richard III
- Richard's death
- Henry VII
- The Tudor myth
- A shift in power
- Saint George
- The technology of warfare
- Henry VIII
- The Tudors
- Henry VIII
- The divorce
- Cardinal Wolsey
- The fall of Wolsey
- Anne Boleyn
- Jane Seymour
- The Last Three Wives
- Edward VI
- Mary Tudor
- The reign of Elizabeth
- Princess Elizabeth
- Her education
- She becomes queen
- The Virgin Queen
- Elizabeth praying
- Elizabeth's popularity
- Mary, Queen of Scots
- A scandal
- The Catholics
- The Armada
- The Armada (2)
- Elizabeth and Essex
- Court heirarchy
- Administrative offices
- The Privy Council
- Officers of the Court
- Court finances
- Parliament
- Religion and Parliament
- The rising middle class
- The reign of James I
- King James
- The Stuarts
- Problems in politics
- The Midlands Uprising
- Crime and the law
- Coney-catching
- A cutpurse
- Crime
- Beggars as criminals
- The civil law
- An arrest
- Indictment
- Trial
- Judgement
- Nosy neighbours
- The Tower
- The Tower today
- A dreadful warning
- Humiliation and mutilation
- Punishments fit the crime
- Hanging
- The puritan movement
- Who were the Puritans?
- A growing movement
- The Puritans attack
- The Puritans and Parliament
- Satirical attacks on Puritans
- The closing of the theatres
- Ideas
- The medieval universe
- A comfortable universe
- The medieval universe
- The elements
- Hell mouth
- The moon
- Mercury
- Venus
- The sun
- Mars
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- The sphere of the zodiac
- Outer spheres
- Putting nature in order
- An orderly world
- Steps, ladder, chain, scale
- An orderly progression
- The music of the spheres
- Order within order
- A chain of status
- The nobility and genry
- The Commonalty
- Order in the sexes
- Primary qualities
- A table of equivalents
- More foursomes
- The humours (1)
- The humours (2)
- The humours (3)
- How to treat a fever
- Correspondences
- Microcosm/macrocosm
- Signs and the body
- Disorder
- Disorder (2)
- Education
- Literacy
- The education of boys
- The education of girls
- Career choices for women
- The universities
- New knowledge
- A rebirth of knowledge
- The humanists
- Sir Thomas More
- Myth rediscovered
- Old tales in a new light
- The sun in the center
- The "new philosophy"
- Alchemy and chemistry
- Distillation
- The scientific method
- Magic or botany?
- From icon to image
- Renaissance realism
- The water closet
- Machiavelli
- Shakespeare's Machiavelli
- You be the judge. . .
- Montaigne
- The New World
- Travellers' tales
- Religion
- The early church in England
- Henry VIII and the break with Rome
- Crown v. church
- The dissolution of the monasteries
- The Book of Common Prayer
- The Homilies
- Translations of the Bible
- Shakespeare and the Bible
- Edward VI and Mary I: extremes
- Elizabeth's "via media"
- Going to church (1)
- Going to church (2)
- Protestantism: Martin Luther
- Faith, scripture, grace
- John Calvin
- The Zwinglians
- The Counter-Reformation
- The religion of love: courtly love
- Death: the undiscovered country
- Suicide: an act of dignity or despair?
- Suicide on stage
- The supernatural
- Witches
- Witches and King James
- A more skeptical view
- Shakespeare's views?
- The demon sex
- Ghosts: a range of belief
- Ghosts: good or evil?
- Folklore
- A Decorous Puck
- Queen Mab
- The occult?
- Drama
- Classical drama
- Greek tragedy
- Greek comedy
- Aristotle on Greek tragedy
- Greek terms used in tragedy
- The "Unities"
- Latin tragedy: Seneca
- Classical comedy
- Shakespeare and Plautus
- Moralities and mysteries
- The drama suppressed
- The drama reborn
- The mystery cycles
- The morality plays
- Vice and virtue
- The audience
- Interludes
- A Play of Four "P"s
- Early history plays
- Morality to History
- John Skelton: Magnificence
- Early English tragedies
- Medieval tragedy
- Tragic mirth: King Cambyses
- Gorboduc
- Christopher Marlowe
- A mysterious life and death
- Thomas Kyd
- Kyd and Shakespeare
- Early English comedies
- The Commedia dell' Arte
- Romantic comedy
- Academic comedy
- George Peele
- John Lyly
- Shakespeare's contemporaries
- The "University Wits"
- Later Elizabethan dramatists
- Ben Jonson
- Shakespeare's contemporaries
- Jacobean tragedians
- Shakespeare in the Restoration
- Shakespeare's early reputation
- A university view
- Ben Jonson on Shakespeare
- Jonson on Shakespeare (2)
- To the memory of . . .
- Small Latin, less Greek?
- Shakespeare as pseudonym
- Did Shakespeare write Bacon?
- Literature
- Elizabethan English
- Sound and sentences
- Fire-new words
- Pronunciation
- Prose and verse
- Elizabethan poetry
- Blank verse
- Sir Thomas Wyatt
- Sidney as sonneteer
- Narrative poems
- Major poets
- Edmund Spenser
- Elizabethan Prose
- A Defense of Poetry
- From the Defense
- Roger Ascham
- "Inkhorn" terms
- On "maturity"
- The euphuistic style
- The plain style
- Church prose
- Women writers
- Women writers
- More women writers
- Queen Katherine Parr
- Anne Askew
- Jane Anger
- Dorothy Leigh
- Elizabeth Cary
- Lady Margaret Hoby
- Mary Ward
- Lady Anne Clifford
- Isabella Whitney
- A literary circle
- Mary Wroth
- Women as translators
- Literature for women
- Loved and loathed
- Renaissance publishing
- Shakespeare's manuscripts
- Making paper
- The printing press
- Printers and "pirated" plays
- "Ay, there's the point"?
- Problems in the plays
- Censorship
- A tax collector
- The First Folio (1623)
- Art in Renaissance England
- Medieval Art
- Medieval to Renaissance . . .
- Gothic art
- The Renaissance
- Perspective
- New techniques
- Patronage
- Studies from the antique
- Myth explored
- High Renaissance: Raphael
- The cartoon reversed
- Architecture and painting
- Saint Paul (reversed)
- Titian: Venus and Adonis
- Mannerism
- Classicism and anachronism
- Art in the north of Europe
- Flemish art
- Bruegel: ordinary people
- Bruegel: slices of life
- Art in England
- Domestic art in England
- Art in England: Mini-art
- Architecture in England
- Late English gothic
- Late English gothic: details
- Two styles of vaulting
- Renaissance architecture
- Architecture in England
- Queen Anne's house (2)
- English architecture: detail
- A guardian gryphon
- Domestic architecture
- A tudor farmhouse
- Decorative detail
- Architecture of the stage
- A reconstruction
- The New Globe
- Music in England
- Plainsong
- Medieval music
- The madrigal
- Church music
- Streets and fairs
- Shakespeare and music
- Church musicians
- Court musicians
- The instruments
- Keyboard instruments
- A 17th-century organ
- Lutes and viols
- Dancing masters
- Wind instruments
- Brass instruments
- Plays
- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
- The Ghost
- The Court
- Staging the opening
- Revenge
- "Incestuous sheets"
- Hamlet and women
- University student
- Hamlet as actor
- Madness: Hamlet
- Madness: Ophelia
- The duel
- Divine right?
- Claudius: politician
- Ordinary people
- The ending: Fortinbras
- Order restored?
- Hamlet and tragedy
- The sources of Hamlet
- The text: solid or sullied?
- The Taming of the Shrew
- Christopher Sly
- A (not the) Shrew
- Courtship
- Social "order"
- Tamed?
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Fairies and Puck
- Theseus and Hippolyta
- The lovers: the course of true love?
- Hempen homespuns
- The play-within-the-play
- Romeo and Juliet
- Is Romeo and Juliet a tragedy?
- Youth and marriage
- Star-crossed lovers?
- Feasts, revels, and masques
- Friar Lawrence and herbs
- Staging Romeo and Juliet
- The Merchant of Venice
- Venice and Belmont
- Shylock and the Jews
- Legal comedy
- Love and money
- The music of the spheres?
- Henry IV, Part 1
- The history of Henry IV
- Hotspur: rebellion and ambition
- Falstaff: Sir John Sack-and-sugar
- Prince Hal as "Mankind"
- Henry V
- The Second "Tetralogy"
- The Hundred Years' War
- Victory in France
- More than history
- An Ideal Monarch?
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Masks; much ado about noting
- Beatrice and Benedick
- Claudio and Hero
- Dogberry and Verges
- As You Like It
- Comedy and romance
- Marriage: happily ever after?
- Comments on courtly life
- Country life: a chill wind?
- Julius Caesar
- Julius Caesar in London
- Stoics and Epicureans
- Stars and omens
- Roman women
- Plutarch adapted
- Twelfth Night
- Romantic comedy
- Disguise, gender, and identity
- Melancholy Malvolio
- Court festivities
- The end of the comedies?
- Measure for Measure
- Sex and morality
- Crime and punishment
- Religious orders
- Problem marriages
- Othello
- Discord and disorder
- Attitudes to women
- Othello and the Stage
- A non-classical tragedy
- Magic and Darkness
- Religion and Suicide
- King Lear
- Staging Lear
- Violence and madness
- A division of the kingdom
- Disorder and the stars
- Kings and clowns
- Macbeth
- Secret, black, and midnight hags?
- Equivocation, famine--and hawking
- Lady Macbeth: women and power
- Macbeth and its sources
- The Winter's Tale
- The Court: love and hate
- "Exit pursued by a bear"
- The country: pastoral
- Autolycus
- Winter's tales and the "unities"
- The Tempest
- The unities in The Tempest
- Prospero and Shakespeare
- Caliban and colonization
- The young lovers
- Special effects
- Music and masque
- Reference
- Chronology
- Shakespeare's plays
- Plays: 1588-1595
- Plays: 1592-1598
- Plays: 1588-1595
- Plays: 1602-1610
- Plays: 1609-1615
- BCE [BC] to CE [AD] 500
- Years 500-1000
- Years 1000-1300
- Years 1300-1499
- Years 1500-1555
- Years 1556-1558
- Years 1559-1562
- Years 1563-1565
- Years 1566-1568
- Years 1569-1571
- Years 1572-1574
- Years 1575-1577
- Years 1578-1581
- Years 1582-1585
- Years 1586-1587
- Years 1588-1590
- Years 1591-1592
- Years 1593-1594
- Years 1595-1596
- Years 1597-1598
- Years 1599-1601
- Years 1602-1603
- Years 1604-1606
- Years 1607-1608
- Years 1609-1611
- Years 1612-1613
- Years 1614-1615
- Years 1616-1619
- Years 1620-1623
- Shakespeare's Sources
- Sources for the comedies
- Sources for the comedies
- Sources for the tragedies
- Sources for the romances
- Maps of Shakespeare's time
- English possessions in France
- The division of the kingdom
- Stratford-upon-Avon
- A map of London
- The theatres of London
- Bibliographies
- Shakespeare's life
- Shakespeare's stage
- Moralities and mysteries
- The masque
- The stage and staging
- Staging (sources)
- Actors and acting
- The audience
- Society
- Women in the Renaissance
- Courtship and marriage
- Family and children
- The housewife
- The husbandman
- City life
- Outsiders
- Court life
- History and politics
- Shakespeare's "prehistory"
- Shakespeare's Rome
- The history of the Histories
- Joan of Arc
- The Tudors
- Peasant uprisings
- Elizabeth I
- James I
- Crime and the law
- The puritans
- The background of ideas
- The cosmos and "order"
- Science and astrology
- Education
- New knowledge
- Religion
- Churchgoing
- The occult and folklore
- Witches and witchcraft
- The drama (general)
- Classical drama
- Medieval drama
- Tragedy
- Comedy
- Histories
- Shakespeare's contemporaries
- Renaissance literature (general)
- Elizabethan language
- Poetry
- Prose
- Women writers
- Printing and publishing
- Courtly love
- Art, architecture, and music
- Architecture
- Music
- Reference works
- Frequently Asked Questions
- What makes Shakespeare great?
- Shakespeare's life
- Shakespeare's life (2)
- Shakespeare's stage
- Shakespeare's stage (2)
- Renaissance society
- Renaissance society (2)
- Renaissance society (3)
- History and politics
- History and politics (2)
- History and politics (3)
- The background of ideas
- The background of ideas (2)
- The background of ideas (3)
- Questions about literature
- Literature (2)
- Printing and Renaissance art
- Architecture and music
- Help
- Site Map
- About links
- About navigation
- About searching
- Citing this site
- Sound and video
The Tower today.
