Before Shakespeare and BOB 2022 Christmas Quiz

In a costume list from the 1550s held by the Folger Shakespeare Library, what synonym does the writer use for the theatrical figure of "Venus"?

In 1591, what day of the week (in addition to Sundays) did Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council seek to prevent all dramatic playing, in order to keep it free for the cruel "sport" of bearbaiting?

Visits to the Curtain playhouse might well have rubbed shoulders with the likes of the Venetian Ambassador, Antonio Foscarini. But why did he insist on standing in the "pit" or "middle, among the rabble of porters and carters"?

Fencing was one of Elizabethan London's most popular entertainment forms. But what were the three "stages" of prize fighting for fencers seeking to gain full membership of the Society of Defence?

The town of New Romney in Kent ensured all dog owners were registered. The surviving lists give us a census of "pet" ownership in the town, during a period when many dogs would have been used for violent games like bearbaiting. How did the mayor of the town, John Cheeseman, describe his dog in 1579?

A number of European families and individuals lived in the area around the Curtain and Theatre playhouses. One such family were the Marquinos, of whom Francisco was a schoolteacher who taught 24 "stranger" or international scholars. What was his wife's Shakespeare-related name?

Thomas Dekker's tongue-in-cheek advice to Elizabethan hipsters (or "gallants") includes some tips on what to do when arriving in a playhouse before the play starts. What does he suggest these London trendoids should do?

Why did Richard Madox leave a play at the Theatre in 1582?

Playhouses were not unique to London. Margaret Thomas, later Woolfe, was a successful manager of an inn who married Nicholas Woolfe and together ran a playhouse in Bristol in the 1600s and 1610s. But why did she complain about him after his death?

John Lyly was a hugely successful and pioneering playwright. He briefly had a managerial role in which playhouse in the 1580s?