Year Seven visited the Globe Theatre a few months after staging Romeo and Juliet.  It was a tour that began with pupils and staff taking their seats in a gallery on the lower tier of the theatre – a wonderful setting for a lesson on Shakespeare.  The school party was divided into two groups and listened enthusiastically to guides speaking about the staging of a play in Elizabethan times.  They explained that on the day of a performance at the Globe, a flag above the tower tiring room was raised to call the people to the theatre.  Audiences at that time were up to 3000 and were invariably a cross-section of the London populace.  The cheapest way to see a play at the Globe was to be a groundling which meant entering the door leading into the yard around the stage.  For more money, spectators could sit in one of the three curving galleries.

 

Shakespeare’s Globe used no painted scenery but the stage with its massive painted pillars was beautifully decorated.  No curtains descended to cut off the actors from the audience.  Behind the stage was the tiring house or dressing room which was crammed with clothing; musical instruments; copies of lines pasted onto parchment and, of course, the actors.  Props were simple, often no more than swords, torches and pots of pig blood.

 

The guides talked for some time about the construction of the ‘modern’ Globe.  They mentioned the American actor Sam Wanamaker who had visited London in 1949 when the only sign of the Globe’s existence was a bronze plaque.  He was determined that one day he would build a replica of the famous theatre.  It was an ambitious and complex project because it was decided to employ materials and techniques similar to those used in Shakespeare’s time.  Thanks to Wanamaker’s energy and vision the theatre with its twenty sides now stands near the site of the original Elizabethan Globe.

The next part of the outing involved the workshop. The guides had devised various approaches to aspects of Romeo and Juliet.  It was a fun event but a chance nevertheless for all pupils to make an appearance at the third Globe to be built on Bankside since 1599.  ‘We initially focused on facial expressions,’ recalled Paloma Robinson.  ‘Thereafter, we produced the scene in which Romeo and Tybalt fight, necessitating our becoming involved in a great deal of movement, notably jumping and clapping.’

 

The day ended with a tour of the Exhibition Centre, a vast area beneath the Globe which has been designed to cover the development of the theatre during the Elizabethan period.  ‘We saw men’s costumes,’ wrote Alex Frank, ‘that were as extravagant as their womenfolk, revealing deep purple silks and crisp white ruffles surrounding necks and wrists … there was also an exquisite array of musical instruments with flutes as big as me and carved into beautiful shapes.  I could imagine the blasts of battle as well as quiet romantic tunes as I wended my way through the splendid exhibition’.

 

The pupils learnt about the first playhouse which was built near Bishopsgate, London, in 1576 by an actor James Burbage.  He named it the ‘Theatre’ – a word that was not in common usage at the time.  The Theatre flourished and Shakespeare made use of it through a company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.  But when Burbage died the lease ran out and the owner of the land refused to renew it.  Soon after Christmas 1598, Burbage’s two sons reacted by pulling the Theatre apart and taking the timber by boat across the Thames.  They had leased another site on Bankside and there they erected a new playhouse – the Globe.  As Bankside already had two other playhouses – the Rose (1587) and the Swan (1594) – a theatre district developed.

 

Shakespeare’s writing was to contribute enormously to the success of the theatre he referred to as ‘this wooden O’.  The Globe hosted at least twelve of his finest plays before disaster struck in 1613.  During a performance of Henry VIII, a piece of burning wadding from the stage cannon drifted onto the roof.  No one spotted any danger until the thatch burst into flames and fire ravaged the whole building.  The audience escaped unscathed but the Globe was burned to the ground in less than an hour.  It was rebuilt but in 1644 was pulled down to make way for housing.

 

Pupils became engaged in the various activities on offer, with many spending time on the ‘scrabble’ wall where they tried to form Shakespearean quotes.  Thomas Blystad says that he was fortunate to be able to try on a suit of armour: ‘It was really heavy and most uncomfortable as it dug into my shoulders.  I’m glad we don’t have to wear such outfits nowadays’.