Lectures from the Allen Room & Wertheim Study: Shakespeare and Medicine : "So Sick I am not, yet I am not Well" : Innogen and Cymbeline

Join us for a fun talk exploring the Elizabethan age of diagnosis, treatment and cures for the physical and mental maladies found in Shakespeare's plays.  We will discuss some of the medical practices during the time of the Bubonic plague (Black Death) in London when Shakespeare was writing for the stage.  Elizabethans believed an imbalance of the "humors" would affect the patient and blood-letting would balance the body.  Melinda Hall will discuss quirky cures for common maladies such as how putting a roasted onion in the ear could soothe an earache among other helpful remedies.  Short excerpts from King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor  and All’s Well that Ends Well  will be acted to demonstrate these points. 

Melinda Hall (SAG-AFTRA, AEA, The Dramatist Guild) is an actor, writer, director and producer of the annual Sonnet Slam in Central Park celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday.    Follow @willfulpictures