The Globe Theatre

An unusually warm day - we were a bit early - Starbucks had a nice air conditioned view of the theatre.

No photos allowed during the performance - so this was
quickly taken as the players arrived.

The Globe has a quirky history and has always been full of irreverent people wanting a bit of action. Attending a Shakespeare play here was on our Must Do list and finally we did it. My head was delighted but my buttocks protested greatly!  Even with a cushion for a pound I needed to stand up an hour in and got a prompt telling off from an eagle eyed usher. I wondered later if I was blocking her view. After intermission people seemed to be allowed to wander in and out of the groundling (at the peak of summer this was called the stinkard) space without showing tickets. 

An actor, Richard Burbage, leased land from a Mr Allen in London and built his amphitheater. It was based on the coliseum model but on a miniature scale. Plays were only staged in summer because the building had a doughnut roof.  This design allowed natural light in which illuminated the players much better than candle light but gave no protection from the weather. Those sitting on the afore mentioned torturous seats kept dry under the doughnut roof. It was built to entertain 1500 people paying a penny per play but it was not uncommon for 3000 to jam themselves in.

The Box Office.  This term was created in the original Globe - Money for tickets was collected in a chest(box) then taken to a small room at the rear of the theatre(office) to be counted during the performance. A world wide term courtesy of The Globe

Oh torturous seats - no backs on the front row and less leg room
than an economy airline sardine seat.

Mr Allen refused to renew the lease one year so while he was celebrating Christmas out of town, Burbage and his carpenter friend - Peter Smith, dismantled the building and stored the materials in the carpenter's yard - eat your heart out IKEA.  As the lease clearly said that everything on the land belonged to Burbage, Mr Allen was only able to fume at the fine print and loss of the building he thought he had tricked away for himself. To be fair Mr Allen may only have wanted to close the playhouse down. They were not popular with the more religious middle classes living in the area as the 'wrong' sort of folk were attracted into their streets.

Waiting outside the East door. Tar and thatch in view.

In 1599 Burbage found a site to lease close to the Rose Theater, the Swan Theater and a Bear Baiting pit on the other side of the Thames in Southwark.  The carpenter and his men reconstructed the oak frame then plastered it with a mix of animal hair, clay, chalk and sand. The structural timbers were tarred to protect them from the elements which creates the Tudor black and white look.

Unfortunately the tar and the thatch created a furious fire when some canon special effects, in the playing of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, ignited the roof.  It to burnt down to its brick icosagon (20 sided polygon) foundations in less than an hour. The Globe had lasted for 14yrs after opening in 1599. The only person injured was a guy whose pants caught alight but a true friend put the fire out with his pint of ale.

Today the Globe is always tied with Shakespeare's name, he had acted for Burbage and written plays but it wasn't until the rebuild in Southwark that he became a partner of the company and paid a sum of £10 (2 years of a shopkeeper's wage) along with many others for the privilege. He was only one of many authors that had their work performed there.

Left - Ben Johnson, Poet Laureate at one point.  Center: William Shakespeare  Left: A portrait found in the Corpus Christi College library (Cambridge) and thought to be of a young Christopher Marlowe.  Brilliant wordsmiths!

Thought to be a Self Portrait of Richard Burbage.
See an excerpt of an article about him at the end.

The Lord Chamberlain's Men performed many different plays at The Globe, on tour and when they became the Royal warrant players(now the King's Men) as King Jame's favourites, at Hampton Court and Whitehall. History tells us that Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) attended the Globe both officially and in disguise in the few years she lived after its opening. And she would have seen many different playwrights not just the Bard. An estimation has been made that around 3000 new plays were written and performed between 1560 and 1640. In these 80 years around 40 of Shakespeare's are known to have been written and performed. Christopher Marlow and Ben Johnson were another couple of many famous playwrights of the times.

Plagiarism was a word that Shakespeare did not invent; in his day nobody cared if a new play was a rework of an ancient tale. Comedy of Errors has the same plot as a Roman story he would have studied at school by Plautus and The Taming of the Shrew was a rewrite of one of his contemporary's plays. Even Romeo and Juliet has lines in it copied from someone else - the original ending had them married with kids and a happy ever after.  What people wanted was action and new stories.  As only 30% of the male population and 10% of the female population could read it is quite understandable that oral story telling was still so important. Flags would go up outside the theaters to show that a performance was about to begin, red for a history play, black for a tragedy(sad ending - usually because of the main character's character flaw) and white for a comedy(happy ending - not necessarily because it is funny. We watched King John, a history play and the way it was acted had us laughing all the way through.)

Sweetie bags from Hardy's - who would have thought they could have caused such embarrassment .
Did anyone get a bruise by a Yorich white chocolate skull?

Playwrights earned a pretty good wage for the day, they got about £5 per play.  Sometimes these would be jointly written though so the funds had to be shared and royalties were never paid. Authors had no rights over their work once it was sold. It paid writers to take a plagiarism shortcuts if they found a plot formulae that worked or they didn't have time or inspiration to be completely original. Some summer seasons they didn't make a lot of money because of the plague. London mayors would order any large public places to close when there was a threat of an outbreak to reduce the amount of contact between people - hopefully stopping the spread of the disease. Really it is remarkable that Shakespeare's friends were able to find any copies of his plays( handwritten and scored over because paper was so expensive) to put in the First folio after his death in 1616.

Every play had to be approved by the Master of the Revels - a court appointed position that censored works before production. Of course jail and head chopping for politically incorrect plays meant that imaginary countries, foreign lands, euphemisms and histories that pandered to the ruling monarch and their ancestors were the order of the day. Political correctness in those days had nothing to do with religious niceties, controlled levels of violence or rating for sexual content.

Some of the plaster work inside the theatre. The woman looks as if shes saying - that'll be enough staring at me, that bloke over there is saying something important!

When the company had the Globe rebuilt after the 1613 fire, they were wealthy enough to insist on a tile roof instead of the cheaper thatch to prevent another fire and much more decorative plaster work. In 1642 the Puritans closed all the London theaters because of their immoral influence.  The Globe became tenement housing and was eventually torn down.

The flag at the top of the pole was red - indicating that the performance was a history play.

Today's Globe theater exists because an American came to England eager to celebrate the Bard's greatness.  He was stunned to learn that there was only one little plaque in Southwark in remembrance of Shakespeare and the Globe theater. Sam Wanamaker (this is his true name even though the temptation to say - 'he wanamaker Globe' makes it seem unlikely) was an actor and director. His first job in the 1930's was a Shakespeare play in a estimated construction of the Globe in Cleveland Ohio.

Sam Wanamaker next to the plaque he found in the 50's - photo from 
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/02/sam-wanamaker

After 23 years of persistence and assistance from others who bought into his dream, Mr Wanamaker was able to purchase some land one street closer to the river than where the original had stood. He saw the building begin but died before it opened officially in 1997. There is an attached indoor theater named after him.

The Shakespeare's Globe Trust did lots of research and designed a replica. The two pillars holding the roof over the apron stage are made from matching trunks of Oaks. One of the bricks uncovered by archaeologists in the original building's foundations was analysed and copied so the 20 sided theater would have the same base. Craftsmen were hired to build it in the same way as it would have been - with the edition of modern health and safety demands.  Health and safety made other demands that altered the design, it had to have fire escape doors and had to get special permission from the city council to go against the rule that no building in London should have a thatched roof (made in 1666 after the great fire of London). It was ordered to have fire retardant materials under through and on the roof.  They numbered seats to prevent authentic overcrowding and put higher barriers on the gallery seats.

Left:East Tower door where we began our ascent. Right:A shot through the ground floor door with the throne visible on stage.
In the shop earlier Petal chose a T'shirt with 'Something wicked this way comes' written on it and Willow choose the season's play list )Justice and Mercy) printed down the back.  M got a pen (not a duck feather quill) and of course I got the guide book .

And so the Globe rose again in London, the West End being the center of a modern theater culture today so the Globe is now surrounded by office buildings, restaurants, apartments and galleries instead of it's brotherhood of escapism. Across the river St Paul's still stands and a new bridge connects the banks.

I had been waiting until one of our favourite plays were announced but gave in to watch King John, one of Shakespeare's less popular plays, and consoled myself with the idea that being in the building would be enough. I was so surprised - the actors made this play funny and sophisticated.

King John was chosen as a nod to the anniversary celebrations of the Magna Carta this year. It was barely mentioned but we all know that King John was bullied into signing it by his barons. The document removed the monarch's right to take land or imprison people at will. After seeing his sneering at the Pope and his envoy in the play it is hard to believe that the Pope took John's side and abolished his responsibility to it because of his right as King.

Jo Stone-fewings played a superbly sardonic John and made you actually like the King and feel dismay as he was misunderstood(even though he ordered the death of a child). The fantasy 'Phillip the Bastard' (supposedly the illegitimate son of John's brother, Richard the Lionheart), played by Alex Waldman reaches into the audience and demands attention. Queen Elanor (John and Richard's mother) played by Barbra Martin looked and sounded as if she had just stepped off the boat from medieval Aquitaine.

Alex Waldman starring as Phillip the B.

There was a lot of Gregorian chants that were mostly in tune and the fight scenes carried their heavily organised structure lightly. A few of the actors played different main parts, who was who required more concentration(because of face recognition) than understanding the language. I am always amazed at how easy Shakespeare is to understand 1/2 way through the first act when it takes a lot of effort to get through a whole play when reading it. They are not for reading but for seeing and hearing.

A couple of my favourite lines:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief. (3.4.92) 

(When Constance - wife of King Richard hears her son has died jumping off a castle wall where he thought himself imprisoned.)

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man. (3.4.108)

Walking back to the tube past Southwark Cathedral(since 1905) Trying to get just the right shot of the new Shard and Gothic tower, I lost the family so wandered back past the Bread baking school, the Borough markets to the stairs to the station and was surprised not to see them. I rang them and got a mouthful about irresponsibly getting lost! They were vexed because they had gone looking for me.  Oh dear I feel the Granny genes catching up!

The relationship between script and actor - an interesting theory about the lack of Shakespeare's fame upon his death.

"Richard Burbage is considered to be the first great actor of the English theatre. He achieved success as performer by the age of twenty and during his career he appeared in plays by Jonson, Kyd, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Webster. He also played many of the major Shakespearean characters, including Othello, Hamlet, Lear, and Richard III. "It is likely that Richard III was the most popular of all Shakespeare's plays with the Elizabethan public; it provided a superlative part for Burbage" (Rowse, 130). 
Legend tells us that a woman fell in love with Burbage when she saw him play Richard III and begged him to come to her chambers that night under the name of King Richard. But Shakespeare overheard the proposition and, as a joke, left the theatre early to take Burbage's place. Shakespeare was "at his game ere Burbage came. Then, message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III" (Rowse, 130).

The shock and sadness over Burbage's passing may be the key to our understanding of why so little was written on Shakespeare's death just three years earlier - a theory put so eloquently by C. C. Stopes in Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage:

"Shakespeare was out of it all now - away in the quiet Stratford Church he lay. And Richard Burbage, having a son at the end of the year, in memory of him called the child by the name of '"William." It has often been noted by enemies that the world did not seem very much distressed about the death of Shakespeare. No one seems to have grasped the true reason. Shakespeare had retired from the stage, as an actor, some time before he died. His personal appearances in London were rare.
And when the end came, and the creation of plays from that source ceased, we have every reason to believe that there was an increase in the number of the performances of his plays. For in the characters Shakespeare wrote for him Richard Burbage attained his greatest glory. Men did not realize that Shakespeare was dead while Burbage lived. His power of impersonation was so great that he became his characters....We have only to turn to the poems referring to Richard Burbage to realize that it was in the death of Burbage that to the world our Shakespeare died.” "

Mabillard, Amanda. Richard Burbage. Shakespeare Online. 21 Nov. 2000. (28.6.2015)

Rowse, A. L. Shakespeare the Man. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
Stopes, C.C. Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage. London: A. Moring, Ltd., 1913.

The Globe also sends out troops of travelling players in the summer season - much like in Shakespeare's day. Willow and Petal went to see their production of Romeo and Juliet at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on the very hot 1st day of July. They were both impressed with Mercutio - played by Steffan Donnelly.

The theatre is a good size but goes mostly unnoticed behind a tiny street facade.