Ep 51: Poverty and the Playhouse with Rob Henke

For William Shakespeare, the Globe theater itself represented a place that brought together a mix of classes. People from high society, all the way down the poorest of the poor observed Shakespeare’s plays, but how much of the bard’s work acknowledged the poor and what was the reality of charitable giving going on around William Shakespeare as he was penning some of his famous scenes about beggars? That’s the question we’ll be asking today as we chat with our guest, Robert Henke. Rob is a professor Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, and the author of several works on Shakespeare and theater. He joins us today to discuss one book in particular, Poverty and Charity in Early Modern Theater and Performance.