The History of English Podcast · Kevin Stroud

Episode 176: All the World’s a Playhouse

·1 hr 20 min·4 clips

The Rose excavation found a 14-sided playhouse, a human skull in a wall, and artifacts like a scabbard and shoes.

1. The History of English Podcast episode 176, 'All the World’s a Playhouse,' focuses on how Elizabethan playhouses shaped English vocabulary. 2. The host presents the episode as part of the history of English language development and uses Shakespeare, the Theatre, the Rose, and the Swan as the main examples. 3. The core question is how the actual venues of Elizabethan drama produced words like pit, gallery, box, and scene. 4. The first permanent theater north of London’s city limits was built in the 1570s and was simply called the Theatre. 5. Philip Henslowe’s Rose Theatre in Southwark became a key example because his records preserved which plays were performed and how much money they made. 6. The Rose excavation in 1989 revealed that the playhouse had 14 sides, not six, and produced artifacts including a sword, a scabbard, shoes, and a human skull. 7. The skull was lodged in a wall near the stage, and the host notes that many scholars think it was placed there as a ritual or superstition. 8. The open yard at the Rose was about 50 feet across, the standing spectators were called groundlings, and they paid a penny to watch from the pit. 9. The term orchestra is traced to Greek and originally meant 'the place for dancing,' before it came to mean the area close to the stage and later the musicians themselves. 10. The galleries were more expensive than the pit, and the phrase 'playing to the gallery' later came to mean appealing to the common people. 11. The episode also links 'peanut gallery' to the old habit of spectators eating peanuts in American theaters. 12. The term balcony is discussed as an Italian loanword from balco, meaning a scaffold, and the host notes that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet does not use the word balcony. 13. The discussion of box seats leads into box office, with the Oxford English Dictionary favoring an origin in the theater’s box section rather than a literal money box. 14. The word cash is also traced to a box or case, through Latin and Italian casa, and is said to appear in English in the mid-1590s. 15. The word scene is explained through Greek scena, the tent or hut behind the stage, and the episode shows how it developed into scene, scenery, the scene of the crime, and making a scene. 16. The host then turns to Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, with Hotspur, Prince Hal, Falstaff, and the Battle of Shrewsbury. 17. Shakespeare’s line 'the game is afoot' appears in the argument over Hotspur’s rebellion, and Falstaff’s lie about being attacked produces the phrase 'discretion is the better part of valor.' 18. The episode also explains older grammar in lines like 'Worcester is stolen away' and 'they are come,' and notes the shifting use of 'his' and 'its' in early modern English. 19. Listeners interested in Shakespeare, Elizabethan London, and historical word origins would likely enjoy this episode. 20. Listeners wanting modern literature analysis without language history may want to skip it.

As heard by us

A measured look at how playhouses helped shape English words and theatrical history.

Episode 176 follows the theater outward, from Shakespeare's plays to the playhouses that held them, and then into the language and cultural currents moving through Elizabethan England.

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Why you'd press play

You want Shakespeare, playhouses, and English-language history pulled together cleanly.

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