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Back at Shakespeare’s Globe |
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The Globe resurrected in London's Bankside. (Yang, Wayne) |
By Wayne E. Yang - The bright
neon exit signs are giveaways that this is not the same Globe
Theater where William Shakespeare once worked. There are fewer rows
in the upper balcony. The back row has been enlarged to meet modern
fire standards. Yet this theater is the only thatched roof structure
in London. It is magical for fans of the bard to step into a
recreation of the place where his works might have first been
staged. As we step into the upper balcony of the recreated theater,
the stage seems surprisingly close. When we enter the theater, there
is only one other tour group. They politely traverse the ground
below, concrete, not open dirt, where the peanut gallery used to
stand and chomp on snacks during the entire length of the plays. Our
guide tells us that the stench of Elizabethan theatergoers, not
known as frequent bathers, would have filled the air. Clip clod. A
school group rushes the stage. They go through the pantomimes of a
stage fight with members of the theater’s troupe. Our guide is
bearded, has a full head of bushy hair and Burtonesque heft, a
theatrical presence that screams actor. Sure enough, when a fellow
visitor asks him what he does, he says, “actor.”The recreated Globe Theater represents what scholars have pieced
together from their research and is only a best guess for what the
original theater looked like. No plans or construction drawings of
the original have survived. The first two incarnations were
destroyed: the first in a fire in 1613, and the second in a
demolition in 1644 to make way for tenements. The lime plaster, oak
beams and water reed thatch of this latest incarnation sit
incongruously among the modern glass and steel buildings of London’s
gentrifying Bankside. The beams, which were cut from green oak, even
now continue to push and pull against each other as they cure. Our
guide explains how London’s theaters were built outside city limits
on the south bank of the Thames River since their activities were
deemed on the outskirts of propriety. You could likewise indulge in
other activities otherwise frowned upon on the other side of the
river.
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Wrought-iron gates. (Yang, Wayne) |
Back when I was a Zurich-based banker, I used to frequent London
when my wife was a financial professional, then student in the city.
The Globe was not open then. And no, Shakespeare in Love was not
filmed here. The theater has seen its resurrection due in large part
to an American actor, director and producer named Sam Wanamaker. As
a young man in 1949, Wanamaker went hunting for the theater all over
Bankside with a taxi driver in tow, only to find a plaque on a
brewery wall where the theater once stood. His commitment to
fundraising and seeing the rebuilding through is clear from the
amount of exhibition floor space that has been dedicated to him,
architect Theo Crosby and others who pushed the project for more
than 25 years. Unfortunately, Wanamaker did not live to see the new
theater finished.
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