MYPNA_TE_G12_U3_web.pdf

A performance at the modern Globe

 The exterior of the

modern Globe today

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of a penny, stood thoughout the performance. Some of the audience sat

in a gallery behind the performers. Though they saw only the actors’ backs

and probably could not hear very well, they were content to be seen by the

rest of the audience.

There were no sets or lighting at the Globe. Plays were performed in the

bright afternoon sunlight, and a playwright’s words alone had to create

moods like the one in the eerie first scene of Macbeth. Holding an audience

spellbound was complicated by the fact that most spectators ate and drank

throughout the performance.

The first Globe met its demise in 1613, when a cannon fired as part of a

performance of Henry VIII ignited the theater’s thatched roof. Everyone

escaped unharmed, but the Globe burned to the ground. Although the

theater was rebuilt, the Puritans had it permanently closed in 1642.

The New Globe Almost four centuries after the original Globe opened,

an actor stood onstage in a replica of the famous theater and recited these

lines from Henry V: “Can this cockpit hold / The vasty fields of France? Or

may we cram / Within this wooden O the very casques / That did affright

the air at Agincourt?” Building a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe was the

American actor Sam Wanamaker’s dream. It took long years of fundraising

and construction until the theater opened to its first full season on June 8,

1997, with a production of Henry V. Like the earlier Globe, this one is made

of wood, with a thatched roof and lime plaster covering the walls. The

stage and the galleries are covered, but the “bear pit,” where the modern-

day groundlings stand, is open to the skies.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of seeing Shakespeare’s plays performed

at the Globe is the immediacy of the action. The performers, as Benedict

Nightingale noted in the London Times, “are talking to you, asking you

questions, involving you in their fears.” At the Globe, the audience is part of

the conversation. Is that not what theater is all about?

essential question: How do our attitudes toward the past and future shape our actions?

Literature and Culture 251

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The messy political intrigues of the day and

the anxious question of who would rule,

together with a new-found English self-

confidence, are echoed in Shakespeare’s plays.

Questions of legitimate rule and the nature of

social bonds abound there. It is certain that

England blossomed in the Elizabethan era, and

Shakespeare celebrates his land. However, many

of Shakespeare’s plays contain themes involving

the ambiguities of power and leadership. Have

students discuss why they think this might be so.

Whole-Class Learning 251

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