Wait ’til you see the Duke of Buckingham….!

  Here’s an old theatre anecdote:- “….There’s a luvvies’ tale known to every old thesp, about the Shakespearean giant and inveterate boozer Robert Newton, who rolled on stage one night, inebriated as a stoat. As the pickled ham spluttered, drooled and slurred through Richard III, a woman in the front row accused him: ‘You’re drunk!’…

While searching for a 14th-century map of Europe….

  While ambling around in the hope of finding a 14th century map of Europe, I happened upon this site It’s interesting, and includes an anecdote (modern) of the ruse used by a US cartographer of adding fake towns to his maps, to catch out forgers. Someone wasn’t caught out by this, he was actually…

Plantagenet Ireland and Poynings’ Law

It is fair to say that most medieval English kings had little interest in Ireland except as a source of revenue. (The same was probably true about England and Wales but it seems too cynical to say it, and at least they did live there.) Prior to the Bruce invasion, Ireland yielded between £5000 and…

Shakespeare, Burbage, Richard III and William the Conqueror….

Here’s an amusing little tale, that I think is factual. It is taken from here . “William Shakespeare was very much alive above the ears and below the waist. A surprisingly high proportion of the documentary trail concerns his racy and bawdy exploits. “An important anecdote, from John Manningham’s 1601 diary, concerns a performance of…