Magic of the Globe

Our arrival in London early Sunday morning, followed by a full day of sightseeing and flying on the London Eye, was capped by something special for a retired English teacher. I had procured tickets online at face value for perfect upper level center stage tickets at the Globe Theatre. We left O'Hare at 6:00 PM Saturday and were at the Globe by 6:00 PM Sunday -- only 18 hours later due to the time zones we had passed through.

ROMEO & JULIET was performed in traditional format, though not traditional casting (which would have required all males on stage). The play was performed in a solid, straightforward manner including several interactions with the groundlings standing on the verge of the thrust stage. Ticket price for the groundlings is always just 5 pounds, about $9. Following the conclusion of the play, the cast members all participated in a dance.

While all the actors were finely cast and did a great job, for this American audience member, the star of the show was the theatre, from the traditional thatch roof above to the cobblestones below. My mind knows that this recreation was built to modern building codes in the 1990s, but my heart felt that some of those stones were ones walked on by William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage and the rest more than 400 years ago. The atmosphere was magic, the play was wonderful, and our first day in London was a major success.

Maybe it was not the stones. Maybe the feeling was more personal. A poem about the feeling of where I walked:

FOOTPRINTS AROUND THE GLOBE

This particular Globe Theatre was built some four hundred years later;
The skyline and the vista from the site is completely different.
Modern food preparation and sanitation are totally reinvented;
Fashions worn by the playgoers are radically different in every detail.
Perhaps a few of the stones we walked on were here, but most were not,
But there was still a sense of walking in footprints around the Globe.
Those belonging to Richard Burbage and William Shakespeare.