This morning I wake up early because the French girl on the other bunk has been snoring all night and it's impossible to sleep in. My sleep cycle still hasn't synced to the northern hemisphere anyway, and so I am awake and alert. And I pull out the guide book whilst munching on the hostel's breakfast of jam on toast and decide that today is the day I visit Shakespeare's globe.
I am in love with the Underground. I purchase an all day ticket, and then my journey is easy. I cross vast distances all under the city and pop up next door to my destination. Or sometimes not. The closest station to the Globe is London Bridge, and I climb up the stairs there, and then have to make my way through large walled in markets and past little cafes and wine bars to the side of the Thames. I stand, perplexed, for ten minutes outside of a bar called "Walkabout". They claim to be Aussie and sell kangaroo burgers. I am disturbed.
The Globe is easy to find, and not as expensive as some other attractions. A slightly bored looking guide takes us around the rebuilt theatre. It’s built to the same specifications as Shakespeare’s Globe and using the same techniques as would have been used in Elizabethan times, although it’s not in the same location as the original. We stand in the pit in front of the stage and then we climb to the highest galleries. It’s an open air stage and the clouds look like they're about to open onto us – very authentic. I buy a ticket for the afternoon's matinee of Pericles and then wander around the museum.
In each year's season, the Globe puts on about five or six productions. Some of them are Shakespearean, some of them are not. Some of them are modern performances, and some of them are produced just as they would have been in Shakespeare's day. That means no light but what the sun provides, few props, costumes made from fabrics available in Elizabethan times, in Elizabethan style using Elizabethan methods. And girls’ parts are played by men. In the museum, they call everyone's attention to a small stage. Here, a costume mistress and her assistant bring out the outfit the actress playing Ophelia wore in last production of Hamlet, and offer to dress someone in it to give an idea of what the actors go through, and also what Elizabethan women went through. Of course, I volunteer myself to be dressed.
I am taken backstage and given knitted silk stockings and a linen chemise. Back onstage, my stockings are cross-gartered and leather shoes are put on my feet. I am strapped into a corset - a real corset - and I have to sit tall or I can no longer breathe. Next are hooped petticoats and a roll of fabric which ties around my bum to give me hips, and then a heavy skirt and jacket. Linen cuffs are tied to my wrists, and a linen cap to my head, and finally I am dressed. As if I were to be sitting in my chambers all day and not greeting people. I can barely move, and even sitting down takes preparation and thought – care to arrange my skirts just so – and this is the Elizabethan equivalent of tracksuit pants and slippers.
It takes nearly as long to undress me as to dress me, and when I am finished it is time for the show to begin. I am seated in the galleries, because I am too tired to stand in the pit. The play is a modern version of Pericles, but there is still very little set or costumes, and the only light is the sun (behind the clouds). Half the cast is a troupe of acrobats and to indicate a ship on sea during a storm they swing and hurl and climb and tumble on ropes hung from all around the theatre. The actors interact with the audience and the whole thing is much like it would have been in Shakepeare’s day - big on music, and sound and spectacle. Nothing at all like seeing a civilised production of Julius Ceaser at Newcastle’s Civic Theatre.
Afterwards, I catch a train back to the city, and wander through the streets. I find a little Italian restaurant and have pasta and wine for dinner. The place is tiny, yet the head waiter is manic, taking everything on himself whilst the rest of the staff stand behind the counter polishing glasses. I am stunned to see someone at the next table light up a cigarette. Apparently, you can still do that here.
With jetlag, I went to bed early, it is going to be a long journey in the morning. I think tonight, I will sleep straight through the snores.
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