London Shakespear’s Globe Theater
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Shakespeare’s globe theatre
Shakespeare’s Globe was founded by the pioneering American actor and director Sam Wanamaker and has become one of London’s most successful theatres and top visitor attractions.
The theatre is a faithful reconstruction of the 1599 open-air playhouse where Shakespeare wrote many of his greatest plays.
Resident storytellers introduce visitors to all aspects of the Globe, historical and contemporary, including Sam Wanamaker’s epic struggle to recreate the theatre for which Shakespeare wrote many of his works.
Here is it’s interesting story:
The first proper theatre as we know it was built at Shoreditch London in 1576 and the owner was James Burbage, he obtained the 21 year lease and permission to build a playhouse called “The Theatre”.
The price for lease went up but instead of closing theTheatre, Burbage decided to dismantle the building and transport the timber to a new site across the river Thames. This hard work was all undertaken by the Acting Troupe themselves!
The New theatre was called “The Globe”.
Built by carpenter Peter Smith and his workers, it was the most magnificent theatre London had ever seen and was built in 1597-1698. It could hold several thousand people and apart from holding plays it was also reputed to be a brothel and gambling place.
The Globe was a huge success, there was a constant demand for plays, and rivalry between the Theatre bosses was enormous! Days out at the Globe theatre were an exiting event!Above the Globe was a small tower with a flag pole, flags were used as a form of Elizabethan advertising, they were erected on the day of the performance, colour coding was used, a black flag for tragedy, white for comedy and red for history.
In the plays there were no actresses, female characters had to be played by young boys, the acting profession was not a credible one.In 1593, 1603 and 1608 all theatres were closed due to the bubonic plague, The Black Death.
Globe audiences had to put one penny in a box by the door which would pay for a view of the play by standing on the ground, in front of the stage. To sit on the first gallery would cost another penny in the box which was held by a collector on the front of the stairs. To sit on the second gallery, you put another penny in the box held by the man at the second flight of stairs. Then when the show started, the men went and put the boxes in a room backstage - the Elizabethan box office. Profits there were shared between members of the Globe company as such and the owners of the theatre (called “housekeepers”), who included the James and his son the actor Richard Burbage and five others, one of them was William Shakespeare. Shakespeare received approximately 10% of the profit although he had a 20% stake holding in the troupe as James Burbage owned the lease for the land that the Globe theatre was built on.
The Globe was only in use until 1613, when on June 29 a fire broke out at the Globe Theatre . The canon used for special effects, such as heralding great entrances, was loaded with gunpowder and wadding. The thatched roof caught on fire and the Globe Theatre burned to the ground. It is not known whether there were any casualties but there must have been some panic. In 1614 the Globe Theatre was rebuilt.
In 1642, under the force of the puritans all stage plays in theatres were suppressed at he end of the Reign on Queen Mary (Bloody Mary), and two years later it was demolished by the puritans in the English civil war of 1643. All players were to be seized and whipped, and anyone caught attending a play was to be fined 5 shillings. The theatres opened again in 1660 but the Globe was never rebuilt, but the site of the old Globe was rediscovered in the 20th century and a reconstruction of a New Globe theatre was built near the spot.
And so it was rebuilt in the 1990’s due to the inspiration of Sam Wanamaker, where productions are held on a regular basis by the company, and there is also a permanent exhibition showing what life would have been like in Shakespeare’s time.
Bye bye for now!
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Then when it was on, I went to the hall and showed it to him, it is an amazing dress, you can’t wear panties as the slit on the side is very high on the hip!