Returning to Southwark to pick up my laptop gives me a couple of hours to spare, so 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.
It is about to rain and only “groundling” standing places at £5 are left so I join these cheerful people which include a lot of Japanese tourists. Walking in, props are being wheeled onto the stage, some of the musicians are sitting on the edge of it 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.
Never having studied The Merchant of Venice at school (we only did heavier stuff like Macbeth and Julius Caesar for some reason) I am a bit vague about the story. As with the Othello play, I am able to follow it quite easily making 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 apparently. No microphones are used either and the ticket office is asked every week if the theatre has air conditioning! 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 doing stuff like: 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. Biggest irony here was that the land was owned by the Bishop of Winchester whose 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. In Romeo and Juliet for example, Juliet is only 14. And some of the action in The Merchant of Venice reflects openly racist views of the time, for example:
Shylock to Salarino: If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
basically complaining that Salarino 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 a large part of the readership is in the USA. 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.