Ep 160: Characterie and Elizabethan Short Hand with Bryan Crockett

That Shakespeare Life

In 1588, one man named Tom Bright introduced an innovative new method for quickly writing down what you hear during a live performance, publishing a manual he called “Charactery.” A term of Bright’s own invention, Charactery is the first English version of an ancient method of shorthand dating back to the time of Cicero, that allowed anyone to pirate versions of live performance, provided they had enough patience to learn the complicated system. Bright’s innovative technology applied a complicated array of symbols and characters that while intimidating to review today, was a huge hit in Elizabethan England, with several additional shorthand methods being published in England within just a few years of Bright’s work. Walking the line between illegal behavior and artistic prowess, masters of shorthand in the late 16th century are responsible for many of the surviving copies of the sermons from Shakespeare’s lifetime, and our guest this week argues in his publication, Shakespeare, Playfere, and the Pirates, that shorthand may be behind the many errors we find in Shakespeare’s Bad Quartos. The obvious question when you realize audience members at The Globe theater were writing down the play as they heard it is to wonder, how did they accomplish that feat in the age of quill pens and in wells? And did they get arrested for pirating the works of the greatest playwrights of the age? Here this week to explain the mechanics of stealing words from the air as they are spoken, what kind of impact charactery had on the theater culture of the 16th century, as well as the mechanics of Tom Bright’s 16th century disruptive innovation, is our guest Bryan Crockett.

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