The Globe Theatre

London is the birthplace of the classic playwright Shakespeare!

We all are always scared to read Shakespeare. I mean, I’m guilty of buying some “No Fear Shakespeare” books when I needed to read a play or two in school. But no matter what appriciation you have for theatre or Shakespeare himself, seeing a show in The Globe is an amazing experience!

To give a little history of The Globe, the original is no longer standing. The actual site of the original has since been used to build upon, but the location of this replica was the closest they could get to the original location as they could find. American Sam Wanamaker was the main reason this replica was built. When coming to London for business, he wanted to see a show at The Globe and was highly disappointed when he had heard nothing at all was there. So Wanamaker set forth to build a replica of the theatre. They consulted with many historians, architects, and theatre experts to get the theatre to look as exact to the original as possible (except for the dirt ground, which is now pavement due to health and sanitary reasons). Unfortunately, Sam Wanamaker died shortly before its opening and never got to see a live performance there, but he is remembered with a blue plaque that usually is placed on houses where iconic British people lived, but the community of London decided it was necessary for he to have one to signify all of the effort and work he put into having this replica of The Globe which now is a wonderful addition to the city of London.

I must say, it was a complicated situation to see my first show there at The Globe. Originally we were supposed to see As You Like It for my theatre class, but our tickets were not there when we went to see the show. Something happened where they had to release the tickets (strike 1) I went back at a later time by myself for an afternoon performance, but it was all sold out. (strike 2) Then finally we got in after waiting for extra tickets outside (what I should have done during my second attempt).

As You Like It was absolutely stunning. The costumes were gorgeous and the story line was amusing. It is an intertwining complicated story, but in a nutshell, it is about the girl, Rosalind, who gets banished from the city and disguises herself as a boy and comes across her love, Orlando, and helps him with “wooing” Rosalind, with he not knowing it was actually her. It was a fabulous production!

The next night, we went to Love’s Labour’s Lost for our travel writing class. Again, this show was amazing as well, but our main goal was to observe the audience and write a paper about our experiences. While we were there, it started to drizzle a little bit, which is always the downfall of being in the pit at The Globe. However, when reading and learning about The Globe, you always hear how the shows were rain or shine, and it would have been fun to see the actors perform with it raining and to see how the audience would have responded.

What I found so interesting, which may be the reason why so many people like seeing these shows, is the natural way these actors can speak Shakespeare’s words. Reading the text can be confusing, but seeing it performed, in The Globe Theatre, you know it is the best of the best performing. The whole time, I really felt I was back in that era, and the atmosphere that the area creates is breathtaking.