Karen Lyon
Elizabethan education and Ben Jonson's school days
Wooing and Wedding: Courtship and Marriage in Early Modern England
Shakespeare and marriage, in his plays and in his own life
Etiquette in early modern England (part 2)
Etiquette in early modern England (part 1)
The rise and fall of sumptuary laws: Rules for dressing in Shakespeare's England
The well-dressed Elizabethan: Renaissance fashions as social markers
Educating and training a child in the early modern period
How much has parenting actually changed since Shakespeare's time?
The Cotswold Olympicks
The Ancient Greeks may hold the franchise on Olympic wrestling—but how would they have fared against a 17th-century British shin-kicker? In 1612 in the tiny village of Chipping Campden, Robert Dover opened the first Cotswold Olympicks, ushering in a…
Ask a Librarian: Summertime in Elizabethan England
Q: I know about Queen Elizabeth I’s summer progresses, but how did ordinary people spend their summers in Shakespeare’s time? A: For most Elizabethans, summer presented little opportunity for a vacation from regular work routines. There were still farms to tend,…
How Queen Elizabeth I spent her summer vacation
Elizabeth I arriving at Nonsuch, Franz Hogenberg after Georg Hoefnagel. Hand-colored engraving from Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum, ca. 1598. Folger Shakespeare Library. (Click the image to see a zoomable version in the Folger’s digital image collection.) You thought you had…