William Shakespeare

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,… As You Like It, II. Vii.

Against the Thames River, the Globe Theater lay nestled in the Bankside district of London and renowned for its knocking-shops. One such house beknownst so y-clypted as the Cardinal’s Hat, a rude allusion unto the male member. Indeed, many of the Globe’s actors supported their thespian art upon their backs or the backs of others. Long did the Puritans rail against the theater and its players as a den of evil but with little recourse from the Queen’s Court.

Bankside District

4000 souls daily crossed the London’s bridge or ferried by boat to Bankside to visit the theaters and its offered sport. Such be the draw of the theater that patrons doth visit two and three times in seven days – yea even the Queen herself found much pleasure thereto.

London Bridge

And how be the fame of such and wherefore doth it prevail. Sport be the answer unto that conundrum. Much ill doth plague the England of Shakespeare’s time. Plague, famine, labor lack, causeth civil unrest and the court would’th the minds of the commons beturned unto other pursuits. In 1593 eleven thousand lay amort from plague in London wherein putrefied corpses piled upon the city’s streets and their stench rose unto the heavens.

Black Death

Indeed, the theaters did rival that of the public executions for the attentions of the great unwashed. As in old Rome, circuses did work their magic.

Globe Audience

For a pence one could stand in crowd; a six-pence bought ye a stool and for a shilling a box from whereof thy pocket be safe. Cut-purses rove the theater crowd plying their trade with unconcerned abandon. If a public hanging be scheduled, ‘tis common it be a cut-purse whose friends worked the crowd as the feet bedangled in the air.

Public Hanging

But Shakespeare speaketh the tongue of the common man; his word doth touch the soul and linger in the conceits. He writeth of the human condition that all might recognize be they hedge-born or gently-born. And he be a strong arm for the Lancastrian Cause of the Tudor Dynasty as his histories do so reflect. And his magic filled the Globe week after week by those in flight from the toils of the very life itself. His plays oft be harsh but doth only reflect the harsher days of the living.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. Macbeth V. v.

Upon the stage of the Goble Theater did the people London see life – their life.

Inside the Globe Theater

Outside of the Globe Theater

 

 

For unto those which know the Shakespeare not, hear ye then this tale. He be the premier bard of the English tongue and for right reason; he hath created it. Seventeen thousand words awaited his command and many were his creation that touch’th the soul of man or woman – yea even now.

Such was his art that he need not the god in the machine as his tool, but rather by the word and the human condition, itself, did he enthrall great London crowds even unto the Queen herself - God bless her.

This day I write not of the bard but of the stage whereon his plays strutted and fretted their hour only to be heard over the long centuries even to now. But first, a bit about the City of London, England’s beating heart.

London of Queen Elizabeth I be a festering sewer of humanity – raw, brutal, and by our standards now, vulgar. Beburned by fire, infested with rats and plague, the numbers of the unlabored grew each day as the city’s poor did swell from the countryside. And life-span be counted in 25-35 years. To be 50 was to be ancient. During Shakespeare’s time, London boasted betwixt 200,000 and 250,000 souls – a grand city indeed.

The Thames, itself a fetid sewer, be London’s primary source of water. Without adequate sanitation, common streets were beused for emptying bladders and bowel as deemed necessary and a danger to the unwary should they slip and fall. Disease be rife and leeches little more than frauds with chants and spells to ward off evil.

Smoke from factories besoiled the air and the wealthy moved about with cloves in their noses from the fell stench on their way to the theater or place of business. This be the time for the rise of the middle sort – those souls that be neither serf nor gentle but something betwixt. Greed for money challenged sexual perversion and pride for primacy of sin thereat. And the marches betwixt rich and poor grew rapidly. And the new rich did find their way unto the Court of the Queen much to the disgust of the gentles for money hath a loud tongue, indeed, and few wilt say it nay.

Indeed, greed and sexual perversion be a common theme of the bard’s mighty works as his plays doth reflect his times.

England’s primary center for commerce, ships docked daily at London wharfs and the sounds of Arabic, Russian, French, Polish, and Dutch beharkened unto the knowing ear. Strange sights, sounds, and goods now flooded London’s markets and faires.

And along the wharfs sprang up such shops as to tend to the needs of the sailors or the young gentry seeking a night’s sport away from Court. Sudden death be not infrequent thereat, but a constant companion to be reckoned thereupon.

Herein be the crucible of Shakespeare’s genius, the womb of creation, for from this chaos did the bard mold his works that speak unto us yet today as they did upon the Globe Theater in days of yore. And from this chaos did rise the English Nation.