Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music I chose Shakespeare because, gosh, I fell in love with Shakespeare's works. I did a master's degree in 17th century literature and decided to leave that and focus on Shakespeare entirely. His characters were real. I mean, he worked as a company playwright amongst many actors. So he wrote those parts for people that actually existed, and they feel universal in some ways.
We can all connect to Hamlet. We can all relate to the despair Romeo and Juliet feel when they can't be together. Human evolution is something that is continuous, and Shakespeare was very tapped into it. In 1576 the first theater was built across the river in Shoreditch and it was called The Theatre. And Shakespeare's company lived and worked in there first.
Unfortunately they lost the lease to the land that the theater sat in. So eventually they dismantled the theater and then they used the same timbers to build The Globe in 1599. And they called it The Globe and it was their brand new playhouse. Bankside during Shakespeare's time was considered slightly unseemly. There were playhouses.
There were also cockpits where people used to gamble. They used to watch cockfights. There were also bear-baiting arenas.
They would blind the bear and they would tie it to a stake and then set dogs on it and people would gamble. There were also lots of stews or brothels as we know them around this area. But it was also a manufacturing area as well so there were tanners and leatherers. ...and millers and people creating material goods. The first globe, 1599, burnt down in 1613, and they built a second globe in 1614, and that was eventually shut down in 1642 when the Civil War begun in England, and eventually all the outdoor theaters were pulled down, and there was no...
Public performances in playhouses during the interregnum until 1660 when Charles the second came to the throne and the king or monarchy was restored in England and that's pretty much when it was realized that outdoor theaters were sort of out of fashion. The 18th century people made a big deal of Shakespeare as an author and so we're very focused on his biography and his origins in Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford-upon-Avon became the pilgrimage site for centuries for Shakespeare lovers and actors and scholars. Sam Wanamaker was an American actor who came over to England in the 1940s and 50s and was very surprised to find that there was no monument to Shakespeare's working theatre in London on Bankside. And so he made it his life's work to reconstruct the Globe as not only a monument to Shakespeare and his work, but also to make it a living, breathing theatre that modern actors would get to work in and therefore learn more about how Shakespeare's plays were produced.
performed. So it was really Sam Wanamaker's insight to realize that actually the works were born in London. What's really exciting about this building, particularly for a Shakespeare scholar, is that it's a reconstruction of the 1599 Globe, which was the original workplace of Shakespeare.
It's an entirely timber-built building. It's made of English green oak, which was sourced here in the UK. It also has a thatch roof, and there were no thatch roofs in London since the Great Fire in 1666. So the founder of the Reconstructed Globe, Sam Wanamaker, had to fight for many years in order to have approval from the council to build a timber structure and a thatch roof. But it's natural materials, which were available in the 16th century, is what makes it so unique today.
Original Practices Productions were productions that were created by Mark Rylance and his creative team, Claire Van Kampen, Jenny Termani, and Tim Carroll. And it was a response to the building itself, noting that the building had been constructed out of materials available in the 16th century. So they wanted to apply that to performance, to see if they could learn more about the way Shakespeare's actors worked, the way they dressed, the music they sourced and created for the productions, and the way they moved and acted on stage. And so for scholars and students we get to learn a lot about these original plays, the conditions that produce them, the unusual architecture that we have here, such as there being no roof, there being a yard for 700 people to stand during the entire performance.
It creates really unusual architectural conditions, conditions Shakespeare knew and wrote for specifically. So it's taught us a lot about his works. But in very strange manner he is sure possessed, madam.
Why, what's the matter? Does he rage? No, madam, he does nothing but smile. Your ladyship were best to have some guard about you if he come.
For sure the man is tainted in his wits. Go call him heaven! I am as mad as he, if sad and merry madness equal be.
How now Malvoli... Oh! Because the audience are able to be seen by the actors and that they're not in a darkened auditorium, the audience have a much bigger part to play in a performance. They sort of make half of the meaning.
Teach them how to war! And you, good human, whose limbs... were made in England.
Show us here the mettle of your pasture. Let us swear that you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not. If you have a playhouse with three galleries of audiences steeped very high instead of fanning out in front of you, you've got people standing in a yard, it's open to the elements, to the rain, to the wind, to noise off the street. It changes the dynamic of the performance.
It keeps the actors on their toes. There's no amplification, there's no lighting design, and so the actors really only have their bodies and Shakespeare's language to play with.