Shakespeare In An Hour by Christopher Baker

Author:Christopher Baker [Christopher Baker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: In An Hour Books, LLC
Published: 2009-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

THE GLOBE

On the night of December 28, 1598, James Burbage’s sons, Cuthbert and Richard, gathered a group of friends, carpenters, and workmen to dismantle the Theatre. They brought the timber across the Thames by ferry and reassembled it at Bankside. They had thwarted the Shoreditch landowner and constructed the most famous theater in history, the Globe.

Already a shareholder in the acting company, Shakespeare became a shareholder in the Globe as well, originally with a 10 percent interest. The shareholders put up the money to rent the land and build the new theater, and they would share in the profits.

By autumn 1599 the Globe was opened, flying a flag of Hercules holding up the world. One of the first plays was surely Henry V, in which the Chorus welcomes the patrons to the splendid new playhouse, wondering if the “vasty fields of France” can be crammed with the “wooden O.”

By 1600, in a city of just over 200,000, the Globe was one of at least five large outdoor theaters, along with the Curtain, the Rose, the Swan, and the Fortune. Fifteen thousand patrons visited the playhouses each week. Performing the plays were professional companies, who appeared daily save Sundays, Lent, and when the plague forced them closed.

Shakespeare’s reputation grew even more. Francis Meres, in Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, praised the “mellifluous and honeytongued” Shakespeare’s “rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments.” His plays drew in the crowds, and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the Globe prospered, whether they were playing one of their house writer’s works, or plays by other dramatists.

Plays at the Globe from 1599 to 1604 included Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well. Shakespeare also had a hand in the play Sir Thomas More. His contributions to it were slight — at least five writers worked on the play. It was probably never performed in Shakespeare’s day, due to the delicate nature of portraying a Catholic martyr in the realm of the aging Elizabeth.

For Julius Caesar, Shakespeare used Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together. In Shakespeare’s hands, the political melodrama was made interesting because no character is wholly one thing or another. The great ruler Caesar is a braggart who suffers from epilepsy and deafness. Brutus is motivated by pure intentions as well as a vague notion that he holds the reins of history. Marc Anthony seems a familiar political figure, whose powerful, empathetic speech gains support from the common people. The play proceeds mostly in rather formal-sounding verse, its serious speech worthy of senators, Roman or otherwise.

The world of politics and power is portrayed as unnatural and cruel in the comedy As You Like It. The play contrasts a callous and pretentious court, from which both familial and romantic love are banished, against the Forest. There the rightful Duke lives like Robin Hood with his men, a testament to simplicity and loyalty. Forests are usually magical places in Shakespeare’s work, and the forest in As You Like It has an extra pedigree.

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