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History Cafe

History Cafe

By: Jon Rosebank Penelope Middelboe
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Summary

 True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building...

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Episodes
  • #123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    May 6 2026
    Was Shakespeare a Catholic? We examine the evidence and then ask whether his audience would have compartmentalised the world into Protestant, Catholic or alchemical. Wasn’t their world full of magic? In his last solo play, The Tempest, a white magus, Prospero, tells the audience that it’s up to them to make good things happen, to create a ‘brave new world’ in which everyone can be reconciled. Is this Shakespeare’s leave-taking?

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    46 mins
  • #122 Queen Elizabeth's Toyboy - Ep 4 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #122 Queen Elizabeth's Toyboy - Ep 4 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    Apr 29 2026
    The Earl of Essex, it always used to be said, was an airhead. Elizabeth’s swaggering toyboy who posed as a military genius. And yet Shakespeare took the young Earl of Essex seriously, portraying him as Henry V in early performances in 1595. It riled Essex’s rival at court, the Queen’s Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, so much that he ensured English history plays were banned.

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    41 mins
  • #121 The naked King Lear - Ep 3 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #121 The naked King Lear - Ep 3 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    Apr 22 2026
    Shakespeare confronts homelessness with his aging king, reduced to beggary. He makes the audience ask what it would be like if it was you who found yourself out of house and home, shivering and hoping someone would give you their cloak. Is it not, Shakespeare asks, an outrage to blame the poor for their condition?

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    38 mins
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