Returning to Southwark to pick up my laptop gives me a couple of hours to spare so I decide to visit Shakespeare’s Globe. As it is just before 2-of-the-clock as one of his characters might say, I go and see what is on. Fortunately, it is The Merchant of Venice http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/themerchantofvenice/ as seeing Othello again after a month would have been a bit heavy for me.

It is about to rain and only “groundling” standing places at £5 are left. I decide to join these cheerful people which include a lot of Japanese tourists. As I walk in, props are being wheeled onto the stage and some of the musicians are sitting on the edge of the stage talking to some of the audience, as are some of the actors. The music strikes up and the production starts. A steward notices that I do not have a waterproof top, so kindly mentions that polythene capes are available for £2 on the other side of the standing area. It has just started raining so I get one just in time.

I never studied The Merchant of Venice at school (we only did heavier stuff like Macbeth and Julius Caesar for some reason) so I am a bit vague about the story – will I be able to follow it? As with the Othello play, I am able to follow it quite easily and it is a great afternoon. Having seen Shakespeare at the Globe, I do not really want to see it anywhere else and for anyone visiting London, I would put Skakespeare’s Globe as one of the best tourist attractions in London second only to the Tower of London.

The whole theatre is run as closely as possible like an Elizabethan theatre. All the cast for example, get paid the same wages. Some Hollywood stars who have wanted to play there and receive more than the less famous actors, have had their noses put out of joint on this issue. No microphones are used either. For The Merchant of Venice, there is a bridge and three sets of steps to the stage, and several times members of the cast enter and leave the stage passing through the groundlings.

Shakespeare these days is considered a bit highbrow and perhaps too intellectual for some people. This was never his intention as he was very much a writer for the masses, not any elite. Respectable people did not go to the theatre in Elizabethan times anyway. Taking your wife to watch bear-baiting would have been OK, but not to the theatre. If Shakespeare were around today, he would be probably be writing for television with the occasional feature film script. The sort of stuff he would have done would be: Friends, M.A.S.H. Dynasty and Desperate Housewives.

Besides writing, Shakespeare and his contemporaries more or less invented the theatre and the acting profession as we know it in the UK. The first known theatre in London was The Curtain theatre a few minutes walk from my office in what is now Curtain Street in EC2. Previous to this, actors wandered around inns reciting or acting short pieces in taverns. The next theatres were built over the river in Southwark. London could perhaps be described as two cities with the political power in Westminster and financial power in the City. To this day, whenever the Queen visits the City, it is customary for the Lord Mayor of London to meet her at the City boundary marked by a griffon, in Fleet Street.

So while the City was the respectable business part of London, Southwark which lay across London Bridge, was more easy going. Southwark had a reputation something like Soho a few years ago and if you wanted to enjoy the shady side of life, you went there. The biggest irony here was that the land was owned by the church in general and the Bishop of Winchester in particular. The Bishop’s income from what these days would politely be called “immoral earnings” was £40,000 – 50,000 year.

By today’s standards, the special effects are a bit crude but there are trap doors from the stage canopy, for someone descending from the heavens perhaps (cheers from the audience) or rising from the depths of hell (boos and hisses). There are cannons too for battle scenes and it was the wadding from one of these effects that started the fire that burned the Globe down in 1613.

Apart from being in full costume with real sword fights etc, the productions have a bawdiness that some people might find shocking and standards were very different. In Romeo and Juliet for example, Juliet is only 14. Some of the action in The Merchant of Venice reflects openly racist views of the time, for example:

Shylock to Antonio: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

basically complaining that Antonio has spat upon him in the street and always tried to humiliate him, but now wants to borrow his money.

To add to the theatre atmosphere, quite a few of Shakespeare’s plays are set in Italy e.g. Othello, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen from Verona and others. Shakespeare himself spoke some Italian and certainly did not invent the Romeo and Juliet story – there were other versions of it around in his time.

As my blog approaches its second birthday in November, the statistics tell me that by far the biggest section of the readership is in the USA with over 3,000 pages being viewed there each month and over 100 visits a day. I don’t know where I have acquired these readers from but I seem to have readers all over the planet now and I thank you for your support. However, if you are in London, give yourselves a treat in Southwark. If you want comfort and enjoyment, get a seat. If you want involvement and enjoyment, be a groundling.

My own carelessness leaves me locked out of my new laptop and the best solution is to take it back to my suppliers in Southwark. My annoyance is tempered by a walk through Borough Market http://www.boroughmarket.org.uk/index.php?module=visit with its lovely food making me wish I had left home without having breakfast. I finally succumb to temptation and end up buying Stichelton and Tunworth cheeses plus some organic Hoxton rye bread. The former cheese is like Stilton and the latter like Brie. Both are made from unpasteurised milk which is good for my gut and rude health, Dilys tell me. The combination is filling but does not last long which at least gives me another excuse to wander down there again.

On my way to the offices of www.smallbizcomputing.com I come across a plaque showing the location of the orginal Globe theatre used and partly owned by the Shakespeare himself. The original burned down in June 1613 and is a short walk from its neighbour The Rose theatre and the new http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/ When studying Shakespeare at school, I was puzzled how a building or rather its location could be lost.

In 1987, building work started on the “new” Globe many years after Sam Wanamaker, the American film maker famously took a 7 hour taxi ride round Southward to try and find out where the “old” Globe had been. No one had a clue until 1989, when it was found during the digging of the foundations for the new FT building next to Southwark Bridge. There was a big fuss in the press that this famous building should rebuilt there. However, subsequent buildings on the site had really hacked the foundations about so very little of the original was left.

I am stuck as to where my destination is and one of the guys from Small Biz Computing comes out after a call from my mobile. They are not allowed to have a number on their door apparently as the building is listed although the door looks quite new…..

While I can check e-mails with my PDA/phone, this is not very good for other things I use my laptop for, so I pay a surprise visit to the office. It is nice to be welcomed and I explain that I can still only talk for limited periods and my stamina is short. However, I can sit at a computer screen and carry on with my CPD and think about when I will be filling my diary again. The night after my visit to the office gives me 6 hours sleep, which is the longest for months. My throat is still sore when I wake, and the contents which I sluice out remind me that I ain’t recovered yet. But now I only take a quarter of the painkillers I used to and I finally consign the gloop to the bin. The skin on my neck shows a baby smoothness where the whiskers used to be and looks younger, but the bit below that looks older like a classic turkey neck. I dont need the gel any more as there are no breaks in the skin but Aqueous Cream BP and sometimes the Aloe Vera are still needed and itch if I forget.

One of the casualties of my illness is my “party piece” in my lodge – the Charge After Initiation. If you have ever been a Church Warden, you will have received a charge at your appointment. The charge is a beautiful speech delivered to a new brother mason at the end of the Initiation ceremony and lasts about 6 minutes being learned by rote. However, talking this long without pause, is too much for my vocal cords so I have to delegate it to another brother.

This particular initiation is for the son of the current Master and is on the occasion of our 250th Anniversary and takes place in the huge Grand Temple. Our usual meetings in one of the smaller temples typically have an attendance of about 20 – 25. On this occasion we get 381 and is the first initiation there for 20 years.

Viewers of the Spooks spy series on the BBC will be familiar with the exterior of the building in Great Queen Street near Covent Garden.

On Wednesday I manage two meetings and manage to talk for about an hour in each before I croak to a halt. One at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall is about business insurance but it turns out that my friend wants general insurance. In the other meeting at The Arts Club in Dover Street, another friend is looking for £3 million to make a media purchase. He runs both his options past me and appreciates my input – changing his strategy as result. Again business insurance comes up and here is a summary which I sent them each afterwards: