The Classic English Literature Podcast

Send us a textWe're here!  Finally, our first Shakespeare play episode.  Today, we'll look at The Tragical History of King Richard III.  Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textYou may be surprised at how the rivalry between these early Elizabethan theatrical superstars played out!  Betrayal, torture, assassination; this is tabloid-worthy stuff!Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textOooh, you're in for a bloody one today, dear listener!  Perhaps the most popular revenge tragedy in the 16th-century: Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.  Wildly infamous, wildly influential, wildly excessive -- just wild!  It inaugurates the fashion for revenge tragedy that will dominate theater for the next decades, and paves the way for Shakespeare's Tragedy of Hamlet.Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textPerhaps the first great play of the Elizabethan stage, Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great  is relentless and ruthless.  How are we to understand a bloody conqueror and tyrant?  What does Marlowe mean by this spectacle of his success?  We'll look at those questions today!Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textA bonus episode on the Subcast looks at the early modern English theatre, the culture and atmosphere of Elizabethan playgoing, as a prologue to our multi-episode discussion of the great English dramatists of the age, and for all time!Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textThis week on the poddie, we discuss a lesser known -- but by no means a lesser quality -- Elizabethan pastoral by Richard Barnfield called "The Affectionate Shepherd."  In sophisticated, learned verse, Barnfield highlights the homoerotic elements (not always so) latent in classical and early modern bucolics, which I think a heroic feat in for a 16th century writer.Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textIf you listen to much modern American country music, you notice that many of the songs conjure up an idealized vision of small-town rural America, distinct from (and presumably superior to) life in urban areas.  The fact that many of these songs are written in large cities like Nashville points to a kind of constructed nostalgia.This is very like the vogue for pastoral poetry in 16th century England.  We'll look at two famous poems: Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd."Here's a link to a page that will direct you to the many replies and parodies of these poems: https://comelivewithmeballad.com/replies-parodies/Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textToday we'll look at the most famous tale from Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene: Book I "The Legend of the Redcrosse Knight."  We'll discuss its allegorical and neoplatonic dimensions while doing a quick drive-by of a passage from Mutabilitie Cantos.  Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textAs Americans mark Independence Day, I wanted to out that the shift in Western thinking that eventually produced a document like the Declaration of Independence began with a doctrine of the 16th century Protestant Reformation and its influence on Tudor political thought.Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textSome say he is the first real poet of the English Renaissance.  Whatever that may mean, Edmund Spenser certainly looms large in 16th century English literature.  In this first of two episodes, we will look at his paradoxically traditional and innovative lyric poetry, especially The Shepheardes Calendar, Amoretti, and "Epithalamion."Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!