Alumni Stephen Rojcewicz Featured Guest in That Shakespeare Life
August 04, 2020
That Shakespeare Life podcast invites UMD alum to discuss mummy poison in Shakespeare's Othello.
Stephen Rojcewicz, Comparative Literature PhD alumnus, was recently featured as a guest in the podcast That Shakespeare Life to discuss mummy poison in Shakespeare's Othello.
From the episode's description:
In Elizabethan England, there was a strong overlap in the use of drugs as medicine and using them for magic. Real physical diseases like epilepsy or psychological conditions like the pathological jealousy we see exhibited in Shakepseare’s Othello, are all conditions that were just beginning to be fully understood by the medical community of the 16th century. One of the primary drugs used to treat epilepsy and pathological jealously was a drug called mummy, which was extracted from the bodies of corpses. The dark and sinister nature of the drug’s origins, combined with the pervasive belief in the supernatural and conviction of superstition that saturated Elizabethan England society, it was perhaps the perfect choice for Shakespeare when he has the drug mummy be the substance that runs as a theme throughout his play, Othello. Here to help us explore the culture, medicine, and superstition behind the drug mummy and how it was used during Shakespeare’s lifetime is our guest, Stephen Rojcewicz.