A Village Festival, With a Theatrical Performance and a Procession in Honour of St Hubert and St Anthony. Brueghel, Pieter, the younger (c.1564-1637/8). The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

In 1614, a mother of eight put on a play about her cheating neighbour. The scandalous story changes what we know about women in theatre

Only a handful of plays written by women in the early modern period have survived. But the accounts of Alice Mustian’s raunchy stage show shed light on a surprising playwright and impresario.
A March 1593 letter from England’s Queen Elizabeth I to King James VI of Scotland, where she acknowledges his “cumber [i.e., trouble] to read such scribbed lines.” (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Think tech killed penmanship? Messy handwriting was a problem centuries before smartphones

While the rise of smartphones and typing impacts handwriting, bad penmanship is far from a new phenomenon. People have struggled to read each other’s handwriting for centuries.

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