In Search of Shakespeare Study Questions
Episode 1: Time of Revolution
1. Where, when and how was William baptized? Who were his parents?
2. What was the infant mortality rate when Shakespeare was born?
3. Which family was in power, and which monarch began the Protestant Reformation in England?
4. How many times had the religion changed in the past 12 years?
5. What traces of Warwickshire exist in Shakespeare’s plays? Give two examples.
6. Where was Shakespeare’s mother’s family from?
7. What did John Shakespeare do for a living in Stratford?
8. What would have been Mrs Shakespeare’s “pride and joy”?
9. To what office was John Shakespeare elected in 1565?
10. What happened to the paintings in Stratford’s Guild Chapel, and why? What were some of the subjects?
11. When Shakespeare went to school in 1571, what revolutionary changes were taking place? 12. What was a typical school day for the seven-year-old Shakespeare?
13. What was a favorite play performed by Elizabethan school children? What was its “moral message”? What was its concluding message?
14. What scholar found the record of James Langrake informing on John Shakespeare?
15. It turns out John Shakespeare was a “brogger.” What did that mean?
16. What other crime was John Shakespeare prosecuted for, and at what interest rate?
17. Where did young Shakespeare see Mystery plays? How old was he when they were banned?
18. Which poet was Shakespeare’s favorite? Which version of his works, besides the Latin , did Shakespeare know?
19. How did Shakespeare’s “childhood end” when he was around 12? Why? What were the immediate consequences for William?
20. What is chevril, and to what does Shakespeare compare it?
21. Who were Edward Campion and his missionaries? When they visited Warwickshire, how were they connected to Shakespeare’s family?
22. Who was Winifred of Holywell? What document concerning her was found in the roof of the Shakespeare’s house?
23. What was the “hot book” of 1582, and on whom was Shakespeare using it? 24. Where was Shakespeare on Tuesday, November 27, 1582? What’s the proof of that, and what’s the “twist” with that proof?
25. What do we know about John Frith, who officiated in the Temple Grafton ceremony?
26. What opportunities were lost to Shakespeare when he married?
27. Who was John Sommerville, and what did he do in 1583? What did Thomas Lucy do about it?
28. What happened next for the Arden family? What was the location of the final disgrace? Episode 2: The Lost Years
1. Why does this episode begin in Lancashire, not Shakespeare’s home county of Warwickshire?
2. To whom might Sir Bernard Hoghton have called William Shakeshafte, and why?
3. Hoghton tower had a huge lending library containing what sorts of books? Who had access to this lending library, and how was he connected to the Hoghtons?
4. The actor Kit Beeston also ties Shakespeare to the Hoghtons. Ferdinando Stanley of Knowsley, a patron of Shakespeare, lived nearby. What nearby troupe of players might Shakespeare have acted with?
5. How would Shakespeare have gotten from Warwickshire to Lancashire?
6. Why did Shakespeare return to Stratford in 1585?
7. Who came to the Guild Hall in Stratford in 1587? What plays did they perform, and what were they like?
8. Who were Knell and Towne, and how might their actions before they got to Stratford have affected Shakespeare?
9. What about the Queen’s Men’s repertoire suggests that Shakespeare might have acted with them?
10. As a touring propaganda tool, what was the Queen’s Men’s job?
11. In November 1588, of which invading force was it said, “God blew and they were scattered”? Which leader was believed exhorted the troops, “I have the heart and valor of a king”?
12. How many people lived in London in 1588?
13. When was Shakespeare’s first neighborhood of Bishopsgate, now lost, photographed? What catastrophe did it survive?
14. What were some names of bars and inns in Shakespeare’s Bishopsgate? 15. How do we know what Shakespeare’s Parish church was?
16. What was the Elizabethan Shoreditch like?
17. What did James Burbage build in 1576? What was one reason he built it in the working class neighborhood?
18. What playwright led the theatrical revolution in this period, and what was he like?
19. What star played Tamburlaine? What actors were listed on a plot summary from 1590 in that actor’s possession?
20. Why do we think Shakespeare was acting with these actors?
21. What kind material did Shakespeare use to appeal to his audience in his earliest plays such as Titus Andronicus, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Henry VI?
22. Why was war a popular subject of Shakespeare’s History plays?
23. What did the English call the Dutch entry point of Vlissingen? What sort of people hung out there, and which two individuals in particular?
24. What crime, besides blasphemy (“John was Christ’s bedfellow”), did one of these individuals allegedly commit in Vlissingen?
25. When Shakepeare’s ticket sales outstripped Marlowe’s, what critic made fun of his Henry VI quote: “Tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide” ? How does his satire identify Shakespeare as the author of that play?
26. Two printers were executed in 1593 for what crime?
27. What 1593 event would Shakespeare later describe as “a great reckoning in a little room” (As You Like It 3.3.11-12)? What story did witnesses tell of events, and what was suspicious about it?
28. Which famous ability of Shakespeare’s mind might have come from political events of 1593, when he learned to be “careful…Each trifle under truest bars to thrust” (Sonnet 48)? Episode 3: The Duty of Poets
1. The movie begins with the pursuit of the Jesuit poet Robert Southwell. Who was he to Shakespeare? What did he consider the “duty of poets”?
2. What did Shakespeare consider his poetic duty, and what interfered with that duty in 1593? What did he do instead?
3. To whom did Shakespeare address his poems, and why?
4. After he apprehended Southwell, why did Topcliffe bring him home?
5. What did Southwell’s friends give Queen Elizabeth? What was her reaction?
6. In August 1596, what happened? Where was Shakespeare?
7. In 1596, Shakespeare bought New Place, the biggest house in Stratford. He also filed an application. What was it for, and what did it mean?
8. Describe Shakespeare’s crest and motto.
9. What poems did Shakespeare write in Wilton in 1597? To whom were they addressed?
10. Why were theaters closed this winter? Why did Shakespeare hide in Southwark, and what was that area like?
11. What do we know about the woman to whom Shakespeare addressed his last sonnets? Who does the film suggest she was?
12. Who was Simon Foreman?
13. What plays did Shakespeare write in this year?
14. Who was the “best carpenter in London”? What did he and Shakespeare’s company do over Christmas 1598? 15. What date did the Globe Theater open? How did the company choose the date? How was the players stake in the theater different from that of players in the past?
16. In 1601, a disaffected favorite of Elizabeth’s approached Shakespeare’s Lord Chamberlain’s men about performing a particular play with a “banned” scene restored. What was the play, and what was its significance?
17. What did the favorite hope to accomplish with this performance? What went wrong?
18. What was the players excuse for doing the performance? How did this performance affect Shakespeare personally?
19. What was the “war of the poets”? Who were Shakespeare’s biggest rivals, and who wrote for them?
20. In which play, compared by the film to Rebel Without a Cause, did Shakespeare comment on those rivals?
21. What did Jonson consider the “duty of poets”? (His Isle of Dogs had caused theaters to be closed in 1597 and resulted in his own imprisonment).
22. What were the Inns of Court?
23. The play Othello was timed to respond to what Elizabethan social controversy?
24. What is the King Lear quote that ends this episode entitled The Duty of Poets? Episode 4: For All Time
1. In what year did Queen Elizabeth die? How long had she reigned?
2. Who took the throne after her? Who was his mother, and where did he come from?
3. With whom was he lodging in 1603? How did that make it possible for Shakespeare to evade the “thought police?
4. What was the new name of Shakespeare’s company (formerly Lord Chamberlain’s Men?) Why were William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, John Heminges, and Richard Burbage issued 4.5 yards of scarlet cloth in 1604?
5. Describe the “set” constructed for King James’s triumphal entry into London on his Accession Day. What was Shakespeare’s role in this parade or “triumph”?
6. What was Christmas like for the King’s Men? How many plays did they perform for James that first Christmas of 1604-5? How many were new that year?
7. What was the “Gunpowder plot” of 1605 and who was the target? Which group was blamed for it?
8. Name two propaganda plays written in response to the Gunpowder plot?
9. Which play of Shakespeare’s responded to the plot, and how was it different from the others?
10. How was censorship stepped up against the theatre and against Shakespeare in particular?
11. Publishing was a “massive industry.” How massive?
12. What group was in charge of censoring the publication industry? How were Shakespeare’s history plays both responses to censorship and the victims of censorship?
13. How did Shakspeare (Shaxberd) spell the word “silence”?
14. For what refusal was Susannah Shakespeare summoned in 1606? 15. What did Susannah do the next year (1607) and to whom?
16. Who were the “diggers” and how successful was their protest?
17. What was Blackfriars, when was it opened, and what were its advantages?
18. What was Cardenio and what remnant do we have of it?
19. What was a “sure sign” of the improved social status of The King’s Men?
20. Where did actors mix with the age’s intellectual avant garde? What was Shakespeare “slipped” there in 1611, and what play did it inspire?
21. What did all Shakespeare’s late plays have in common? How are all the characters in his late plays “redeemed”?
22. For what were Shakespeare and Burbage paid by the Earl of Rutland in 1613?
23. What surprising purchase does Shakespeare make in 1613? What might he have used it for?
24. On what play did Shakespeare collaborate in that year?
25. What momentous structure was destroyed during the performance of that play? How?
26. What rumor has circulated about how Shakespeare died?
27. How many previously unprinted plays appeared in Shakespeare’s Folio, and by whom were they compiled?
28. Who wrote the tribute that said Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time?