We had our first excursion to London on Friday, January 21. For most of us this was our first time being in the city, and for all of us it was exhilarating. Our day was very full--beginning with a coach tour of London, next going to the Globe Theatre, and then viewing a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Upon our arrival near the Tower of London, a guide hopped on our coach and led us on a 2-hour coach tour of the city. We saw such sites as the Tower of London, St. James Palace (home to Prince Charles), Buckinghame Palace (the Queen's home), where we caught a glimpse of the changing of the guards. We stopped at Westminster Abbey to take photographs. Many kings and queens and literary figures such as Alfred Lord Tennyson and Geoffrey Chaucer are buried there. We also stopped for lunch at St. Paul's
Cathedral, which is where Charles and Diana were married. Many of these places will be revisited later in the semester. The coach tour basically got us all extremely excited with anticipation of seeing these places in greater depth in upcoming excursions.
In
the afternoon we went to the Globe Theatre--a 1990's replica of Shakespeare's
1599 playhouse. This was a destination we were very eager to see. Fortunately
for us, a museum exhibit opened the day before we arrived, so we were able to
be some of the first people to see that. The exhibit had interesting information
on the construction of the Globe Theatre and costuming in the Elizabethan era.
It also had computerized interactive displays.
After cruising around the exhibit we were taken on a guided tour of the theatre itself. We had a wonderfully talented guide who has performed in a number of Shakespeare plays at the Globe. His presentation was a lot of fun. He told us a lot about the dedication on the part of modern-day scholars to replicate the original theatre in every possible way. The new Globe has the first thatched roof, made of water reed, since a fire swept through London in 1666. The flooring is made of a mixture of ash, silt, sand, and hazelnut shells. Scholars found the exact same materials in excavations of ruins of Elizabethan theatres, particularly the Rose. It is thought that hazelnuts were part of the actual flooring, but they may have been a kind of Elizabethan "popcorn." The frame of the new Globe is made of freshly cut oak and is held together by little wooden pegs--no nails. The plaster walls are made of sand, lime, and goat hair. The Globe is really a living building which expands with water. It shifts and settles and is always moving. The wooden pegs allow for this movement without doing any damage to the structure. The stage cover is beautifully painted to depict the heavens. Most likely, the original Globe was elaborately painted. The new Globe has the sun and moon and signs of the zodiac brightly painted over the stage.
The Globe
of 1599 held 3,000 people. Today, by law, it can hold only 1500. This is especially
interesting once one learns that Elizabethans bathed just once per year. They
did not wash their bodies or their clothing otherwise--mainly because the water
was so polluted with human waste. Groundlings paid a penny to stand and watch
the play in the yard. The gallery seats cost 3 pence. The better seats were
those at a distance from the stench of the groundlings. One could pay 12 pence
to sit right o the stage as the play was being performed. This person could
then talk to the actors and interrupt whenever he pleased.
We all had dinner after our tour of the theatre, and then headed for the Barbican Theatre to see Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. From my discussions with others in our group, I gather that most of us thoroughly enjoyed the performance. It was a different kind of interpretation from what we all expected. The stage was very starkly set with no furniture except for a bed and two chairs that were lowered and raised from the ceiling. These items only existed in the fairy scenes. Flowers popped up from below the stage in the forest scenes, and characters jumped out of trap doors in the floor. Costumes were generally simple and modern. Members of the court wore grey suits with a kind of 1930's flair. Helena started with this costume but later was stripped down to a little red dress. The artisan actors in Pyramus and Thisby dressed in Elizabethan garb when they performed their play for the court. The setting and costuming were fun because they forced the audience to use their imaginations to envision a forest or a court. It was much like a stage setting of Shakespeare's era.
The play struck me as being incredibly passionate, sexual, violent, and energetic and was very well-acted. Everything was staged and timed really well. There was a rhythmic interpretive dance throughout the play which built up the energy level. It ended with the entire cast onstatge doing this passionate, releasing dance. Most people said they liked the second half of the play better than the first. Perhaps it was hard to get into this kind of interpretation at first. It was good for all of us to open our minds up to alternative interpretations of Shakespeare plays.
To top it all off, Christopher Reeve was sitting in the row directly behind us. Puck sang the Superman theme song in the play--perhaps because he knew Reeve was there!!