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