Shakespeare's Restless World

Starred review from October 1, 2013
What did Elizabethan theatergoers eat while watching Hamlet? British Museum Director MacGregor (A History of the World in 100 Objects, 2011, etc.) answers that question and many others as he examines 20 objects, now in museums and libraries, that illuminate daily life in Shakespearean England. As for theater snacks, researchers combing through debris buried under the Globe discovered that nuts, dried fruit and various kinds of shellfish were popular. Oysters were cheap, sold by girls known as "oyster-wenches" and pried from their shells with daggers, which every man carried. A two-pronged iron fork, though, was a surprising discovery; MacGregor speculates that it belonged to a wealthy audience member who imported the dining utensil from Italy at a time when most English ate with their fingers. A felted woolen cap gives the author a chance to explain how clothing choices distinguished among workers and signaled class. An obsidian mirror belonging to John Dee, practitioner of the occult arts, inspires a chapter on "the proximity and the influence of a world of spirits" that viewers of The Tempest or A Midsummer Night's Dream took for granted. Dee, it turns out, was a trusted adviser of Queen Elizabeth. A model of a bewitched ship, from the collections of the National Museum of Scotland, proves that for many in Shakespeare's audience, "witchcraft was part of the fabric of daily life." Viewers likely were aware, too, of the difference between the mischief perpetrated by English witches and the "taste for high politics" enjoyed by Scottish witches--the three, for example, whose chanting opens Macbeth. Civic life was indeed tense throughout Elizabeth's reign and even after her death. The country was roiled by threats of treason and assassination, beset by religious conflict and repeatedly infected by plague. Beautifully illustrated, MacGregor's history offers a vibrant portrait of Shakespeare's dramatic, perilous and exhilarating world.

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Starred review from September 15, 2013
Shakespeare may never have owned a Cristallo-glass goblet made by the craftsmen of Venice. Yet by contemplating such a seventeenth-century object, MacGregor enters the world the Bard creates in Othello and The Merchant of Venice. Just as he did in A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010), MacGregor repeatedly converts fascinating objects into talismans transporting readers across time and geography. In this volume, 20 well-chosen artifacts open perspectives on both Shakespeare's literary art and his historical circumstances. Readers examine, for instance, a seventeenth-century dagger and suddenly find themselves beside the doomed Mercutio in Romeo and Julietand among the reckless roughnecks roaming the streets of Elizabethan London. Readers likewise scrutinize a brass-handled iron fork recovered from the Rose theater, an implement amplifying Falstaff's cry in The Merry Wives of Windsor for skies that rain potatoes and prompting reflections on the oysters that groundlings ate at Elizabethan plays. Readers even peer at a reliquary containing the eye of Catholic martyr Edward Oldcorne, a grim reminder of the cruel blinding Gloucester suffers in Lear and of the brutal real-world executions carried out scant yards from the Globe Theater. Visually splendid, intellectually stimulating, a must-buy for any library with patrons who still care about the Swan of Avon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2013

In A History of the World in 100 Objects, British Museum director MacGregor used artifacts from the museum's collection to tell the story of human history. Here, he works with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC to portray 20 objects, from Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation map to a bishop's cup, that sum up Shakespeare's world. With more than 100 color photographs.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2014

British Museum director MacGregor looks closely at 20 objects that typify private and political life in England during the time Shakespeare's plays were first performed, accompanying his descriptions with many colorful illustrations. This approach brings the reader closer to Shakespeare's audience by looking at their thoughts about Queen Elizabeth, their fear of the plague, the weapons they carried, and even what they ate at the theater.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.