The Globe Theatre II
*g* so much easier to grab some details from Wiki than have to type out everything myself! What it misses out is that there seem to be have no real attempts to rebuild the Gobe until Sam came to London from America and asked a cab driver to take him there. The driver had no idea what he was talking about but eventually was able to take him to a bit of brick wall that was originally part of the foundations. A shocked Sam rounded on his British actor friends and spent the rest of his life trying to have the Globe rebuilt - as it would have been at the time.
Due to various constraints they had to settle for a site roughly 200m from where the Globe was in Shakespeare's day. They then had to try and work out what it looked like. There were various clues and one of the best was that full plans existed for another theatre that was linked by ownership to the Rose and other theatres in the area. It was built only a year or so after the Globe was completed and the man ordering it wrote rapturously about the new Globe. He dictated that his new theatre was to look exactly like it.
When construction work began on the Globe they went fully authentic. Each brick is handcrafted using 16th Century moulds and tools. The building is entirely wooden, with each piece numbered as it was when built then, and the wooden staves are held together with wooden nails. In between is white plaster mixed with goat's hair (apparently it was cow's then but modern goats have a coarser hair that keeps everything together better) and London's first thatch roof for centuries went up (but complete with sprinklers because otherwise they weren't allowed). The new gate for the groundlings (all the poor sods who stand in the pit) had each piece handcrafted by different artisans. Each piece is a symbol of their favourite Shakespeare play i.e. a newt for the witches in Macbeth.
Today you pay to go into the Exhibition Hall and then get taken on a tour of the Globe theatre which is well worth doing and fascinating. We were immensely lucky in that a director and two students had been granted an hour on the stage and we got to watch them perform a scene from.... well we never did figure it out. None of us recognised the play although it would have been one of the comedies. The mistress is breaking sumptuary laws by dressing her chambermaid up as a noblewoman and they discuss dresing up a young boy as a serving girl for them. There's an argument between the women on the propriety of the scheme and various rude jokes. Normally there's men dressing up as richer men or different men, or women dresing as men but I can't remember any where she dresses up as a richer woman to help her mistress in a scheme. Let me know if anyone has any thoughts!!
It's quite funny in the exhibition hall, just like at the Tower of London they have a huge exhibit on Guy Fawkes as well (doesn't seem very Shakespearian does it?). I think in NZ we've got a bit of a soft spot for the little anarchist, we always do root for the underdog, and we're really quite thankful for an excuse to make things blow up in pretty colours each year (bring back the good old days of skyrockets!). Over here he's very firmly a terrorist and the exhibits do seem coloured by today's 'War on Terror' campaigns and paranoia over what could happen next. It was interesting though to read about how they were all connected and who else might have been involved etc...
Also, very cool in the Exhibition Hall is in a room off the ground floor is the audio room. You can read extracts from various plays (and the other parts are read by the pc) and then have it played back to. You can sit (or stand) in a booth and choose actor/play/speech to listen to. One booth has about ten different actors doing 'To be or not to be' from Hamlet. I'd gotten there pretty late in the day so I only had time to listen to fragments. I'd like to go back and just sit there for an hour listening to them all...
Cool gift shop too, though a little small. I now have teeny leather bound editions of Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet that can travel with me.
Unfortunately, each year is themed and this year they're doing the histories really. So none of my favourites are playing :( They're doing Coriolanus, Antony & Cleopatra, and another one. And Comedy of Errors as their comedy but not till the end of July. I do of course plan on going though. They start in about five weeks so I'm hoping I can go in the last few nights after Contiki before I head home.
Apparently they try to perform as it was in the day. So the hundreds of groundlings packed into the pit are encouraged to boo and cheer and hiss. The actors will interact with the crowd, apparently a few years ago when they did R&J their Mercutio started flirting with a girl at the front, kissing her hand and trying to get her up on stage. They'll insult the crowd. They'll adlib if they forget lines etc...
Due to various constraints they had to settle for a site roughly 200m from where the Globe was in Shakespeare's day. They then had to try and work out what it looked like. There were various clues and one of the best was that full plans existed for another theatre that was linked by ownership to the Rose and other theatres in the area. It was built only a year or so after the Globe was completed and the man ordering it wrote rapturously about the new Globe. He dictated that his new theatre was to look exactly like it.
When construction work began on the Globe they went fully authentic. Each brick is handcrafted using 16th Century moulds and tools. The building is entirely wooden, with each piece numbered as it was when built then, and the wooden staves are held together with wooden nails. In between is white plaster mixed with goat's hair (apparently it was cow's then but modern goats have a coarser hair that keeps everything together better) and London's first thatch roof for centuries went up (but complete with sprinklers because otherwise they weren't allowed). The new gate for the groundlings (all the poor sods who stand in the pit) had each piece handcrafted by different artisans. Each piece is a symbol of their favourite Shakespeare play i.e. a newt for the witches in Macbeth.
Today you pay to go into the Exhibition Hall and then get taken on a tour of the Globe theatre which is well worth doing and fascinating. We were immensely lucky in that a director and two students had been granted an hour on the stage and we got to watch them perform a scene from.... well we never did figure it out. None of us recognised the play although it would have been one of the comedies. The mistress is breaking sumptuary laws by dressing her chambermaid up as a noblewoman and they discuss dresing up a young boy as a serving girl for them. There's an argument between the women on the propriety of the scheme and various rude jokes. Normally there's men dressing up as richer men or different men, or women dresing as men but I can't remember any where she dresses up as a richer woman to help her mistress in a scheme. Let me know if anyone has any thoughts!!
It's quite funny in the exhibition hall, just like at the Tower of London they have a huge exhibit on Guy Fawkes as well (doesn't seem very Shakespearian does it?). I think in NZ we've got a bit of a soft spot for the little anarchist, we always do root for the underdog, and we're really quite thankful for an excuse to make things blow up in pretty colours each year (bring back the good old days of skyrockets!). Over here he's very firmly a terrorist and the exhibits do seem coloured by today's 'War on Terror' campaigns and paranoia over what could happen next. It was interesting though to read about how they were all connected and who else might have been involved etc...
Also, very cool in the Exhibition Hall is in a room off the ground floor is the audio room. You can read extracts from various plays (and the other parts are read by the pc) and then have it played back to. You can sit (or stand) in a booth and choose actor/play/speech to listen to. One booth has about ten different actors doing 'To be or not to be' from Hamlet. I'd gotten there pretty late in the day so I only had time to listen to fragments. I'd like to go back and just sit there for an hour listening to them all...
Cool gift shop too, though a little small. I now have teeny leather bound editions of Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet that can travel with me.
Unfortunately, each year is themed and this year they're doing the histories really. So none of my favourites are playing :( They're doing Coriolanus, Antony & Cleopatra, and another one. And Comedy of Errors as their comedy but not till the end of July. I do of course plan on going though. They start in about five weeks so I'm hoping I can go in the last few nights after Contiki before I head home.
Apparently they try to perform as it was in the day. So the hundreds of groundlings packed into the pit are encouraged to boo and cheer and hiss. The actors will interact with the crowd, apparently a few years ago when they did R&J their Mercutio started flirting with a girl at the front, kissing her hand and trying to get her up on stage. They'll insult the crowd. They'll adlib if they forget lines etc...
posted by Nixie! at 7:04 am
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