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Sleep Magic: Sleep Hypnosis & Meditation for Sleep Podcast
The Life and Times of William Shakespeare | Hypnotic Biography For Sleep
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Hi, I'm Jessica Porter and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for being here. You know, I have kind of a long intro tonight, so I'm just going to cut to the chase because tonight we are talking about William Shakespeare. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.
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Is a month of change. The seasons begin to shift, routines adjust and life moves at a different pace. And it can be the perfect time to embrace new sources of calm, inspiration and rest. So from September 8th to September 22nd, you can start a 14 day free trial of Sleep Magic Premium, our ad free world of soothing sleep hypnosis and and exclusive themed collections. And this month on Premium we're sharing the story of collection with hours of inspiring, gently told biographies of some of my favorite people in history, designed to help you drift into sleep and to stay there. You'll hear the life stories of visionaries, artists and leaders like Rafael Nadal, Meryl Streep, Mick Jagger, Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo da Vinci, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton all in one episode. We'll be dropping this collection in September, so it's a great time to join. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, just tap to subscribe. But if you listen on Spotify or other podcast players, go into our Show Notes and use the Super Cast link to start your free trial and let these remarkable stories carry you into a peaceful night's rest. Enjoy. Ah, Shakespeare. I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get to him. You know, when I was young in high school and first exposed to Shakespeare, I felt like, I think most kids do like, this is dense, man. I couldn't understand like every third word. And looking them up, even if the definitions were on the opposite page, was a pain in the butt. Shakespeare was quite simply hard work and he didn't seem worth it really. But I think in retrospect, a lot of young people probably feel that way. It wasn't until I was in university that Shakespeare started to become interesting to me. There was a guy in my class named Michael Littman. Hi Michael. Who was this cool guy who at 19 or 20 had the gall to direct Shakespeare plays and he made them fun and cool. Romeo and Juliet in modern dress with a modern sensibility, you know, having fun. And Michael would cut the text here and there so it didn't drag on too long, which is a blessing. Michael was the first person who really made Shakespeare breathe and sing and dance for me. And it just went on from there. Believe me, I am no expert on Shakespeare, but I have done some time on stage uttering his poetry. I studied some of his works in acting school and played entire roles in Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. In one production I played Lady Macbeth losing her mind, and in a second gender bending production, I played Macbeth himself, losing everything. And yeah, I'm here to testify that the guys get better parts. At least they did in 1603. Of course there are entire books written about Shakespeare, but I think for me the appeal is that he was a master of both style and substance. His writing is florid, poetic, acrobatic, and his vocabulary downright muscular. He wrote in iambic pentameter and prose, and his work had a huge impact on us today. Shakespeare was responsible for either coining or committing to paper over 1700 words or phrases used today in the English language. You might know that he coined gloomy, lonely and swagger. But did you know that anytime you use the words zany or bedazzled, you have Shakespeare to thank? Yeah, so that was the style. But then there's the substance. Shakespeare had an almost otherworldly understanding of humanity. Our foibles, contradictions, dreams and desires. He understood us emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually. And he didn't just look through one lens. He wrote deep and rich characters that were young, old, male and female, sometimes males pretending to be females, or vice versa. He created murderers, drunks and thieves along with priests and princesses. To study Shakespeare is to study humanity in all its messy glory. And it's amazing that one person born in Elizabethan times could capture all of that. So tonight we look at the life of William Shakespeare. There are some gaps, as historians don't know everything, but he left us with arguably 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and a whole lot of zany new words. I'll be reading from some of his works tonight, so bear with me. So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position. And let's begin. Allow your eyes to close easily and gently and just let your whole body sink into the bed. The day is done and you're allowed to rest as you gently bring your awareness to your breathing, your awareness coming home again to your body. Coming home again to your breath. Good. Now bring your awareness up into your eyelids for a moment and imagine that your eyelids are feeling loose and limp and relaxed. Let them feel sleepy and heavy. Good. Now I'd like you to accept the suggestion that you. Your eyelids are so relaxed they will not open. And now I want you to test your eyes to make sure they won't open. So just wiggle your eyebrows, pretending you cannot open your eyes. Good. Now this relaxation around your eyes, just let it move back into your head. Imagine it pouring down into your shoulders and into your arms. Imagine it moving down inside your body into your torso, moving down through your chest, down into your belly. As your belly relaxes and your pelvis is sinking into the bed, just allow your body to feel heavy as that wonderful relaxation moves all the way down into your legs. And your legs are suddenly feeling very heavy, heavy and tired. And that's okay, because the day is done. As you bring your awareness to any sounds that may be going on around you, you allow those sounds to take you deeper and deep, because you are using your mind in magical ways, because you're relaxed and becoming more and more relaxed every moment. Things that might have bothered you are now taking you deeper and deeper because you are in charge of your mind and the only sound you're paying any real attention to is the sound of my voice. I'm going to start the reading tonight a little early, but as I read about Shakespeare's life, with every word I say, you'll find that your body is sinking deeper and deeper into relaxation. And soon you'll find that you'll drift and float and dream. Imagine it is 1564 and William Shakespeare is born in the English village of Stratford upon Avon, a small market town nestled among the green fields of Warwickshire. Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry viii, has been on the throne for just six years. And although England has recently made peace with France, the plague is having a resurgence and Britons in more populated areas are succumbing to it. The Avon river winds gently through Stratford, reflecting its timber framed houses with white plaster walls and dark oak beams. Imagine you are there now. It is a market day. The streets smell of freshly baked bread and the musk of livestock, and the leather hides from the tanners. You hear the clang of a blacksmith's hammer ringing from an open workshop. Children are running barefoot through the muck, chasing a rag bull. A peddler cries out his wares, needles, ribbons, pewter pots, while an old woman crouches on a stoop hawking apples. A fiddler plays outside the ale house and the church bell tolls, marking time. You come to a house on Henley street where the Shakespeare family lives. It smells of wood smoke and oiled leather. For John Shakespeare, William's father makes gloves for a living. The floors are made from packed earth strewn with rushes, and the hearth provides both warmth and light. Above it, narrow beds are pressed into tiny chambers where William, the eldest of six, sleeps close together with his siblings. Imagine he is climbing down from bed and sitting at a big wooden table for breakfast. He chews on a hunk of coarse bread and drinks what is called small ale, a very diluted beer made for children. As the water isn't clean enough to drink. There are no existing images or references to what Shakespeare lay looked like as a child. So let's imagine him with fair skin, auburn hair and curious eyes. On his walk from home to school, he dawdles a bit, his eyes soaking up the scenery. He notes how the tanner's left leather darkens in the sun, how a drunkard curses the sky, how A girl sings a bawdy tune as she carries a basket of bread. As his heart beats within him, he takes the pulse of the life around him and these details enter into him. And though he doesn't know it yet, they will be the marrow of his plays, the clamor of the streets, the language of everyone from beggar to blacksmith. He arrives at school, a large building made from stone and timber. It is the King's new school, a free grammar school chartered by King Edward VI for the boys of Stratford. You watch as he walks down the long hallway, blending into a stream of children and entering the large classroom framed in timber. Will sits down at a long wooden desk that he shares with two other boys. There are few windows, so on every desk a tallow candle burns and an iron holder. And the air is hazy with candle smoke and chalk dust. The teacher begins the class speaking in Latin. All the subjects today will be taught in Latin. So little William recites the ancient language with his schoolmates, voices rising in unison. His mind is being trained with this classic structure, opening a portal to the epic poems of Ovid and Virgil. Through Latin, he discovers the plays of Seneca and Horus and wrestles with the logical arguments of Cicero. Young Will's mind is expanding and deepening, developing tools to express its unique magic. Just a mile away, in a hamlet called Shottery, lives a teenage girl named Ann. Several years older than Will, she's from a well established family, although her father has recently passed away. As a teenager, William begins courting her at her family's cottage. And when he is just 18 and Anne is 26, she becomes pregnant. And not only is William suddenly a married man, a mere six months after the wedding, he becomes a father. So life is changing quickly, and William is evolving in important ways. Already possessing an observant mind and a gift for language, William now has love to add to his experiences. As he wrote in his sonnet number 116. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh, no. It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ Nor no man ever loved William and Anne's baby girl is named Susanna. But the family grows quickly again when Anne gives birth to twins, Judith and Hamnet. So William, interested in acting and writing, goes to London, more than a hundred miles away, to find work. The city is swelling with life. The streets are slick with mud and crowded with horses, carts and people press shoulder to shoulder. Shakespeare walks the streets as he did in Stratford, but now he's a young adult, wearing a linen shirt, hose and doublet. He sports a modest, ruffled collar, and like most men of the time, he has a dagger hanging from his belt. He is older now, and his powers of observation are more keen. As he strolls down the street teeming with merchants, he. He notices a thief deflecting a seller's attention as he slips a ring into his pocket. He watches noblemen dressed in velvet and brocade looking down their noses at the riffraff. There are beggars with their hands outstretched and prostitutes trying to make eye contact, everyone playing their role within his play. He imagines what they're thinking and feeling. He feels the rhythm of the streets like a pulse, a heartbeat, as he crafts scenes within his mind. Iambic pentameter has its roots in Greek and Latin poetry, but was first employed in English by Geoffrey Chaucer. It is a style of writing that uses a short syllable followed by a long one known as an iamb. So iambic pentameter creates a vertical verbal pulse. Da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum. Ten syllables per line. Da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum. Like the beating of a heart. Da dum da dum, da dum, da dum, da da. Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare adopted iambic pentameter as their primary form of verse, sending their plays like heartbeats into the world. He walks along the River Thames, the rhythm of his steps like the beating of his heart, and the waves of his thoughts collecting and layering into scenes and soliloquies. The river is busy and vital through full of slowly moving barges and fiery, shouting ferrymen. He smells tar and the tang of fish. He hears gulls screeching as they circle above, eyeing for scraps. He crosses the river into Southwark, where the theaters are, and the scene shifts. Taverns spill laughter into the street while actors and poets debate loudly over pints of ale. It is rowdy, dangerous and electric with possibilities. By the time he's 28, Shakespeare is becoming well known, his reputation establishing itself. He has written several plays which have garnered attention, and he has co founded an acting troupe called the Lord Chamberlain's Men. He wears a mustache, a small beard, and is sending his heartbeat out into the world. His magic mind is expanding, connecting. He is supporting his family and growing his life until tragedy strikes. In the early 1590s, the plague returns. Stages go dark, theaters are shuttered. And this time the disease takes not just strangers, but William and Anne's only son, Hamnet. At the age of 11, Shakespeare's heart is etched with unbearable loss. A darkness opens up inside of him that spills into his work. Hamlet, King John and Twelfth Night all contain the fingerprints of grief and loss. Shakespeare goes back and forth to Stratford, wrestling with darkness. He turns to writing sonnets, taking solace in words alone without an audience. As time passes and sadness takes up resonance, life moves forward in spite of it. Shakespeare and the five other Lord Chamberlain's Men fund the building of a theater in southwark, and by 1599 it is complete. Named the Globe, it has a grand circular structure of timber, whitewashed walls and a thatched roof as it stands proud among the ale houses and brothels near the river. Imagine Shakespeare standing before it, proud and passionate. He walks inside, where the open yard smells of mud, sweat and roasted nuts sold by vendors. Theatergoers press close to the stage, their faces lit by the sun. Above them rise the galleries with carved timber railings worn smooth by hands. On stage, Juliet stands at her balcony pining for her Romeo. Everyone looks at her, fixed and Shakespeare's words hang in the air, alive in the voice of actors, alive in the murmuring gas, gasping crowd. The heartbeat continues. Shakespeare's works are presented at the globe until 1613, when a cannon misfires during a production of his new play, Henry viii and the thatched roof catches fire. The theater is destroyed, but Shakespeare and his original crew of players rebuild it quickly with a fire resistant rubber roof. In his late 40s, Shakespeare returns to Stratford and settles back in with his family. He returns not as a poor player, but as a man of distinction. And he is a grandfather now. His magic mind has brought entire worlds to life on the stage and on the page. His words have been lifted by trumpets and echoed in palaces far from Stratford. People look at him differently here. Some nod respectfully, others whisper his name with envy or pride. A boy stares at him as he himself once stared at people passing through town, wondering what worlds they had seen. The church bell tolls as he passes the ale house and he hears the fiddle again. Another man playing the same tune. He Heard as a boy, there is a tenderness here. This street has carried him from boyhood to greatness, and he carries it back through his work. Shakespeare is a wealthy man and buys one of the grandest houses in Stratford, called New Place, built of warm red brick, with oak beams, tall chimneys, and orchards spreading behind it. During the day, he walks in the garden, smells the herbs, and plucks ripe apples. The Avon flows nearby, carrying the calls of swans and the splash of oars. He plays with his granddaughter Elizabeth. In the quiet evening, Shakespeare sits in his grand home on furniture carved from dark wood, quill in hand, sketching the outlines of the Tempest, his final play. As the fire crackles in the hearth, candles flicker against the plastered walls. The heartbeat continue. In 1616, Shakespeare's story ends where it began, in stratford. He is 52 too, and some believe he dies on his birthday. A poetic twist. He rests now at Holy Trinity, a beautiful stone church shaded by yew trees. On the banks of the Avon. The river still glides past him, slow and steady. Perhaps his magic mind saw this all long before it happened. For at the age of 35, Shakespeare wrote a soliloquy for the play, as you like it. And in it he sketched out the arc of a single life and all the stages within it. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages at first, the infant mule, drooling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. And then the lover, sighing like furnace with a woeful ballad made to his mistress's eyebrow. Then a soldier full of strange oaths, bearded like the pard, jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, in fair round belly with good cape and lined, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances. And so he plays his part. The six his age shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon with spectacles on nose and pouch on side, his youthful hose well saved a world too wide for his shrunk shank and his big manly voice turning again toward childish treble pipes and whistles in his sound, last seen, a bowl that ends this strange eventful history. A second childishness and mere oblivion. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. As you go deeper and deeper your body feeling heavy on the bed as you drift and float Entry it it it.