At the time of William Shakespeare, London, under the steady hand of Queen Elizabeth I, was emerging as the centre of the world's most dynamic empire and British seafarers like Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake were bringing home new discoveries and riches from the new colonies in North America.
The Royal Exchange, built by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1567, was helping to shift commercial power from Antwerp to London.
It was therefore, natural that William Shakespeare should spend a great deal of time in London, rather than his native rural Warwickshire.
In London, Shakespeare – as was the custom – was involved in far more than merely writing his plays. He also courted investors to finance his productions and built theatres in which to stage his plays.
London has undergone massive changes in the four centuries since Shakespeare strode London's streets -in particular the massive destruction wrought by nightly bombing of the Nazi Luftwaffe in the Second World War. However, traces of two of his theatres, south of the River Thames, in Southwark, the Rose and the Globe, are particularly well chronicled. The Globe has now been lovingly reproduced, using traditional materials, on the very site of the original.
This was largely through the efforts of movie maker Sam Wannamaker, who having come to London to see the Globe theatre was shocked to discover it no longer existed and set about raising funds to locate and reproduce this iconic building.
One of Shakespeare's most famous plays, Henry V, was probably written in 1599 – the same year the original Globe theatre was built – and it was probably given its first performance to christen the new building.
In Shakespeare's day, theatres did not have the layout we know today but were in the shape of a circle, with the play being acted without scenery in the center of the circle, so the audience, mostly standing and crowding round the central stage, had to use their imagination. In Henry V, Shakespeare makes a reference to both aspects.
In the Prologue, he writes:
". . . may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
that did affright the air at Agincourt?"
He then continues . . .
"On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder."
Other of Shakespeare's plays performed at the Globe include: Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet and King Lear.
Henry V was the last of Shakespeare's "Royal" plays. Yet so prodigious was his output he had to use alternative venues, when his own theatres were already showing existing works.
And so it was, three years later in 1602, his new play "Twelfth Night" was given its first performance in The Middle Temple Hall – one of the four Inns of Court.
This is a marvellous Elizabethan building with a splendid hammerbeam roof which, fortunately survives to the present day and provides another firm link between Shakespeare and London.
© copyright 2006 Jon Michael and London Vacation Secrets