The Globe and Shakespeare

Now Richard lll is not one of my favorite plays of Shakespeare or for that matter even one that I have read but we are doing it for English so I had better start.  I personally hate tragedies everyone just dies or goes crazy, but when we watched the movie and then went to see it at the globe I started to understand why Shakespeare wrote it.  It was like reading a history book but way more interesting.  And easy to understand for that people back then.  For the first half I was standing on the ground like I would have if I was born in the 1500’s and for the second half I was in the upper most box where the famous people would have sat.  On the ground you where much more involved with the play, one girl was given a flower by Richard and another guy got spit on when Lady Anne spat on Richard.  By the end of that first half my back hurt like a pregnant women and, I have way more respect for the groundings.  I don’t know how they did it.  One really strange thing was that all the actors were men!  The Globe does certain plays that they call original practices  were all the actors are men just like it would have been back in Shakespeare’s time.  It was super weird when Lady Anne first came out I was like “that is one ugly women no wonder she had to get into acting” but when she started to wave her hands about I realized that there was no way that a women could have such manly hands and face and everything else.  After that it was just funny and you couldn’t wait till a woman was on stage.  The costumes were exquisite.  We watched a movie on the Globe and how they make the costumed is ingenious they don’t use sewing machines and everything is used over and over.  You know those white collars that look like a dog cone that queen Elizabeth wore well they wear them too but they are held together and on with pins along with many other pieces of the costume. I’d be scared to go on stage. 

But the stage was beautiful. and I was not allowed to take pictures so this is sneaky Michel

When I got up to the box seats after the intermission I was much more interested in watching other people then watching the rest of the play so I missed the first two or three scenes because of acting pigeons, glorified camera Nazis and others people’s reactions.  But by the end when Richard was seeing all the ghosts of the people he killed and really walking down the crazy road I was back paying attention.  With the amount of stage they had it was very interesting to see how Richard and Richmond the man he was fighting both went to sleep the night before the battle, one in a bed and the other in a chair but both right next to each other on the stage.  Richard was woken by the ghosts of all the people he killed and Richmond slept peacefully.  And when the battle started Richmond won because of his clear conscience.  All in all the globe is the best and I want to see many more plays here as long as I get to sit. 

 Random gate to keep the groundings out with pieces from Shakespeare's plays and John is posing like a boss hahaha