Few Elizabethans were wealthy enough to afford a licensed physician. Instead, they would rely on the knowledge of a local “wise woman,” with her home collection of remedy recipes and medicines. Or, they would send a description of their symptoms (along with a urine sample) to an “empiric,” who might cast an astrological horoscope. Broken bone? Call the barber-surgeon!

Melvyn Bragg discusses the four humours, a medical theory that saw the body as a concoction of four essential juices.

Medieval doctors held a vital position in society, as they led people through the tough times of the Plague. Doctors recommended certain practices to help keep the disease from infecting them. Recommended was avoiding hot baths, sexual intercourse, physical exertion, daytime slumber, and excessive consumption of desserts. Instead they promoted a diet of bread, nuts, eggs, leaks, peppers and onions to keep them healthy.

Did Shakespeare’s contemporaries believe in witches? Carole Levin looks at witchcraft trials in the 16th century and considers their relation to the ‘weird sisters’ of Macbeth.

Some time in the mid 1580s, young Will Shakespeare, for reasons not entirely clear to us, left his home, his wife, and his family in Stratford and set off for London. It was a time when Elizabeth, “la plus fine femme du monde,” as Henry III of France called her, had occupied the throne of England for over twenty-five years.

In Shakespeare's time ignorance and superstition held relentless sway over the popular mind. The woods were the haunts of fairies. Our modern enlightenment has driven away these gentle creatures from their accustomed playgrounds.

Shakespeare has penned some of the most iconic villains in English literature. Here we round up seven of his most famous murdering usurpers, power-hungry backstabbers and scheming sinners