Printing

Our tour group were all issued with an electronic device and headphones so that we could hear our guide. This seemed a bit odd to me in a theatre, but there were several other tours taking place concurrently with ours and so it was definitely a good idea. The guide gave us a brief history of the place. The first Globe theatre was built in 1599. It was destroyed by fire in 1613 when a prop cannon misfired during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, sending a piece of burning wadding onto the theatre’s thatched roof. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by 1614, but this was shut down (as well as all the other theatres in London) in 1642. This was due to a puritan sentiment in Parliament, just after the English Civil War had begun. The modern Globe Theatre was the brainchild of American actor and director Sam Wanamaker (the father of actor Zoe Wanamaker). He effectively emigrated to the UK when McCarthy started his witch hunt in the 1950s. Wanamaker's project started as early as 1970 when he launched the Shakespeare Globe Trust. He initially supported the project with his own earnings. He died in 1993, around four years before the Globe Theatre was officially opened. There’s a blue plaque on the Globe wall facing the Thames. It says: ‘Visionary who re-created Shakespeare’s Globe.’ 

The guide led us to a room containing a printing press which was used to create copies of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. It seemed a simple but laborious process to produce each print of a page. I imagine that the most difficult part would have been arranging the letters from a laterally inverted viewpoint. I asked whether the acting industry recruited from the educated section of society of the time, since there couldn’t have been many people who would have been able to read. She said that apprentices would be recruited and that they would pick up printing and reading skills from the job. She also made a very good point that it was quite possible that the printers might have swapped words that they didn’t know how to spell, with one of those that they did. After all, it wouldn’t be until 1755 before Samuel Johnson produced his dictionary. By the way, Johnson was a visitor to the Anchor pub, a short distance along the river towards Southwark (visited in London 40 Year Pub Crawl).  Maybe it was the printers and not Shakespeare who were the real creatives? 

All The World's A Stage

We were led into the main auditorium of the theatre. My first impression was: ‘Crikey, this place is actually quite small.’ I’d always wondered how the audience would have heard the actors in this theatre. It was clear that hearing anybody in the auditorium wouldn’t be a problem, since the actors are so close to the audience. The stage filled nearly half the floor space of the theatre. The audience could view the play from three sides of the stage. My second impression of the place was; ‘There’s a lot of wood around here.’ The designers had tried to keep the theatre as authentic to the original as possible, although this must have been difficult given limited historical documents. The place even has a thatched roof which was half covered in moss. The construction must have been a nightmare to design having to comply with the building fire regulations. A concession to modernity was the electric lighting, which seemed a decent compromise to me. 

The ground floor of the theatre was standing room only and dedicated to the ‘penny stinkers.’ They might have benefitted from the cheapest tickets, but there were no toilet facilities in the theatre and so one can only imagine the conditions and stench. On the plus side, the guide said that there would be vendors selling peanuts and beer. The central area was also opened to the elements and so I’m sure the punters  prayed that the weather forecast would be like a midsummer night’s dream. The penny stinkers were renowned for being rowdy and would throw fruit and nuts at disliked characters. It does sound as though they had  more of an immersive experience than those seated in the three tiers around the circumference of the theatre. At least those people got a seat though. I can’t imagine standing for 2 to 3 hours to watch a Shakespeare play. We went to sit in a ground floor seating section. I actually got quite a good view of the stage and I was so close that I’m pretty sure I’d be able to hear the actors without getting my ear trumpet out. The guide took us up to the middle tier where there were ‘luxury’ boxes. Apart from some artwork on the wooden screens that separated the boxes from the rest of the plebs, the seating was pretty much the same. In fact it was probably worse, since these more expensive seats faced the side of the stage where it would have been harder to hear the actors. There were also two wooden columns that supported the wooden canopy above the stage that hindered the view a little too. The guide pointed out that the immersive and intimate design of the theatre may have influenced how Shakespeare wrote his plays. It would be easy to see how writing an actor’s soliloquy might involve engaging a response from the audience that was so close that you could almost touch them. 

Folio And Dresses

The guide led us to a modern room where a copy of a ‘First Folio’ was on display. This book reproduced 18 plays and without it Shakespeare's texts may have been lost. The book was opened at ‘The Tragedie Of Julius Caesar.’ There was also a reproduction of a 1597 actor's dress used to depict Elizabeth I. The guide said this would have weighed 35kg. Given that I struggle to carry an 18kg rucksack when I’m backpacking, I couldn’t believe that the actor would have been able to move at all with that much gear on. I had to question it, but the guide was adamant that it was true. Of course, I had to Google it. The AI generated response said that…’a reproduction of an Elizabeth I gown, similar to those worn in theatre productions, was noted to weigh about 50 lbs. So that’s 23 kg, rather than 35 kg, but even that sounds incredibly heavy to me. Maybe they recruited the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger to play Elizabeth I. 

Reflections

I’d enjoyed the tour of the Globe Theatre. It had been informative and well presented by our guide. The visit had provided a real insight as to how the plays would have been performed in Shakespeare’s days. As we sipped coffee in the Globe cafe, Queenie asked me if I’d go and see a Shakespearean play. My ego told me my answer should be a definite ‘yes’, but I didn’t want to back myself into a corner. I told her that I probably would if I had a couple of months beforehand to read the play and properly understand it. I said that my time at high school had been an intellectual desert where we were asked to analyse Shakespeare plays with no apparent motive. Everything in school seemed to be about the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why.’ It was only when I left education and read classic texts again, that I really understood and enjoyed them. I told her that for me, school sucked any pleasure out of a subject. Thinking about it, I couldn’t think of any occasion where teachers actually gave a reasonable reason why we should be learning any part of the curriculum. The ‘how’ seemed to be an end in itself for everybody involved in the business of schooling. It seemed like a tick-box exercise to get you to your next stage of life, which of course was work.  I left school having learned certain skills, but with no real idea as to why I needed them. I remember that my school gave what they called ‘careers advice’; I think ‘life advice’ would have been more useful. Queenie gave me a knowing look of somebody who had taught English literature to inner city children for decades. Hmm…what do I know? 

Our guided tour of the Globe Theatre also gave us ‘free’ entry to the replica of the Golden Hinde (for those that didn’t pay attention in history lessons…Sir Francis Drake’s galleon, that was the first English ship to circumnavigate the globe). The floating museum was moored a little further eastwards along the Thames and so we headed off in that direction.