Explore Shakespeare’s Rochester

We’re taking over Eastgate House, Rochester, for an afternoon on the 14th February, with an open house and a talk.

Music, drama… bears? Discover how Shakespeare and contemporaries would have experienced entertainment in the Medway towns. The “open house” at Eastgate House (1pm-5pm) will feature music, fencing, interactive reconstructions, and dramatic characters from the only surviving play set in sixteenth-century Rochester–John Lyly’s Mother Bombie. 

This talk, with musical accompaniment, will explore the city’s vibrant leisure scene, which would have been familiar to the likes of Shakespeare but also to other contemporary celebrities—like Sackerson, a famous fighting bear!  Rochester was also the setting for one of English drama’s earliest city or domestic comedies, John Lyly’s Mother Bombie (c. 1594). Come along to learn more about the real people and events that characterised the entertainment industry of Shakespearean England and who visited the Medway towns—and discover with us how Rochester was brought to life for Elizabethan audiences across the country.