London, England - Shakespeare's Globe Theatre - August 2024

Our last activity (besides dinner) of the trip was to go to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

A little history first - Shakespeare opened the original Globe Theatre in 1599; it's commonly believed that Julius Caesar was the first performance there. It operated first solo, and later in tandem with a second location at Blackfriars, until a cannon shot through the thatch roof and caused it to catch fire in 1613. The entire original theatre burnt in about two hours - fires were sort of a thing in London in the 1600s. Shakespeare gave up and moved back to his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon around that time (dying there three years later), but the King's Men (his company) kept going. The King's Men theatre company rebuilt it within a year and used the second Globe until Parliament shut it down in 1642 - I'm not entirely clear on why Parliament cared enough to issue a decree. Anyway - it was leveled and other buildings were built on top of the site.

However, in the late 1940s, American actor Sam Wanamaker came to London to find the original Globe. All he found was a little plaque, so he sort of got a bug up his ass and started the Globe Trust in 1971 to try and recreate the original Globe as close to the original as he could from the meager renderings available. They even had to get a special dispensation to use a thatched roof, after those were outlawed in London following the Great Fire of 1666. Wanamaker passed away in 1993, but the project lived on in his absence, painstakingly putting together the theatre from all information available about the original. His dream was finally actualized in the new location (just a few meters away) in 1997, with the Queen opening it. More details about the construction process can be found here on their website, if you go to the Construction page (which doesn't appear to have a discrete URL).

To put it sort of succinctly - it was super-cool. We weren't able to go down to the ground level like the guided tours usually do because they were rehearsing a performance down there - but the upside of that is that we got to see a rehearsal. The timing to go see an actual performance didn't work out for us, but we'd enjoy doing that on a future trip. The building is crazy, creating a perfect O shape. There is standing room only on the ground, and then reserved wooden seating up near where we went - but the problem with the seating if the performance is during the day is that it is super-sunny up there. As such, these are all crap phone photos that have sun glares all over the place - but it was really cool to see in person. A absolutely loved it. And the gift shop was amazing - I brought home my husband some Shakespeare Gin to go along with his Gin Austen that I'd gotten in Bath, as well as an original, used play manuscript from a performance.

Way over there on the left, middle tier, would have been sort of the royalty and aristocracy boxes. Even though you're looking at the sides of actors' heads, you'd be able to hear and it would partly obscure the sun.

We couldn't take photos of the rehearsal, but these stagehands were setting up props and set.

The exterior of the Globe, designed to look as it would have in Shakespeare's time.

A pano shot, with our tour guide (who was legitimately awesome) at far right. I would have loved to have been on the ground-level with a fish-eye lens.

We all had headphones so we could hear our tour guide without interrupting the performers. (This is common in places like The Louvre and Musee d'Orsay, and other museums.)

I wish I remembered what performance they were doing. Maybe Twelfth Night? I think it was, and the boat would definitely support it.

A was actually captivated - the sun was just so freaking bright we squinted a lot. Which is funny, since it had been incredibly overcast and rainy all day.

This is the East Tower entrance.

I snuck a photo of one of the performers as he exited the stage during his scene.

I'm 99.999% sure this is my favorite sign I've ever seen in a gift shop.