So Foul and Fair a Day I Have Not Seen...

This is frustrating: I wrote this blog two days ago but have not had time to pictures in it so I didn't publish it. I still haven't been able to put any in, but I'm posting this any way. It's really hard being one of the only people here without a computer. This is about Tuesday...


So here's the thing. I could talk a ton about my day because it was super loooong and packed full. But I'd rather write a little about my day and more about last night because I don't know about you but...

I SAW MACBETH AT THE GLOBE LAST NIGHT.

We were prepared for a very long day yesterday, but by the time we got home last night everyone was exhausted. We got up at 7:30 as usual, went to class, blah blah blah. Class is really interesting here because every single thing we learn about happened here. British Romanticism is all about the beauty of London and the surrounding areas and the philosophies of the people in the late 18th/early 19th century. There is evidence of what we learn in History of London all over the city. But most importantly to me, of course, everything we cover in World Drama, we are going to see. Live. In the theatre. In London.

After our classes yesterday, our history professor John Makey took us on a field trip. We rode the tube across the city, and he walked us through some backstreets to places we never would have seen without him. Most notably to me, he took us to a the Inns of Court. Standing in the courtyard he gave us a short lecture on the legislative system and the process of becoming a lawyer in England. Then he pointed out a building that was constructed in the 1500s, and (are you ready?) Shakespeare and his men performed The Twelfth Night for the Queen in one of the halls of that building. I'm sorry, what?

We continued walking past St. Paul's to find the Museum of London. Having just learned about the origins of the city, called Londinium after the Romans braved the Thames and conquered the Celts, it was very interesting to see the evidence and artifacts from that time (especially since I understood everything). I ended up walking through by myself because while everyone was speeding through, I found myself reading everything. I watched all the movies on the Plague and the Great Fire of 1666, and I spent a lot of time in the Victorian Garden Walk. I only made it through about half the museum so I'll have to go back.

At 5 pm, Josh met us outside the museum to take us to a pub called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (!), which was rebuilt in 1667 and is still open for business. The pub consist of multiple levels, and there is seating and bars one and two stories below the street in catacomb-like rooms and hallways. The ceilings of the stairways are so low that I had to hunch over to get in them. If I had stood up I would have smacked my entire face, from forehead to chin, into the wall.

From Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese we walked passed St. Paul's yet again and crossed over the Thames on the Millenium Bridge, which was built to celebrate 50 years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. Just across on the South Bank is the Tate Modern, which I can't wait to visit. But just a little ways to the left once across was one of the greatest buildings I will ever see - THE GLOBE!!!! I have been learning about Shakespeare's Globe for years. As a Theatre major, I have taken so many classes involving Shakespeare, and the Globe has always seemed almost intangible. But last night as I stood in front of it, it took my breath away. It's not actually the original Globe Theatre, and it stands in a slightly different location from where it once did. However, when they rebuilt it, they took every measure they could to make it as similar to the original as possible. This included using wooden beams and pegs and nails to hold it together. We got our tickets and went inside, and it was greater than I ever expected. The way the Globe was set up was that it consisted of three levels of seating in a circle around the stage. The higher up in society, the higher your seat. In the middle of the circle, right up to the stage, was a dirt plot called the yard. This is where the groundlings stood. The groundlings were the poorest of the poor, and the yard was disgusting. For example, back then, if someone in the seating area had to use the bathroom, they would relieve themselves over the railing onto the groundlings. Of course I wanted to watch the show from there!

For this production of Macbeth, the yard was a little different. The audience still stood for the entire show, but there were black cloths stretched across so the audience. There were slits cut into the cloth for the audience on the ground to poke their head through. It was supposed to be a reference to the Seventh Circle of Hell ala Dante's Inferno, and the effect was definitely achieved. It was such a strange experience! I had also heard that those in the yard could potentially get messy, but I was not expecting what we were about to experience. On the doors outside the theatre were signs warning us of the gore we were about to see. Usually I hate gore, especially in movies, but in true theatre nerd style when I watch it live I am more interested in how exactly productions will pull things off.

As the play began, the Weird Sisters ran under the material and grabbed as many people as they could. We souldn't see them coming and screams rippled across the yard! The bagpipes started, and all of a sudden, actors drenched in blood exploded out of holes in the material. Throughout the show some of the grossest things happened to those of us on the yard. For example, at the point in the show where the Thane of Cawdor is killed for treason, they tied him to a post and began by cutting out his tongue. Well, a blood packet exploded out of his mouth, and the man who cut his tongue out threw it in the yard! They used actual cow tongue and of course, it flew directly at my head and at my friend Camille's. It fell threw Camille's hole, and we had to be careful not to step in it! Sooooooo gross. During the rest of the play, the Porter "peed" in a bucket and taunted the audience with it until he finally dumped it on a group of obnoxious middle-school-aged boys in the front. In addition, when the witches give Macbeth the prophecy that he shall not be killed by any man born of woman, one of the witches "gave birth" on stage to a bloody baby dummy, and blood and gross birth juice (technical term) squirted all over the audience. The whole show was such an amazingly disgusting, wonderfully bloody mess. I have always loved Macbeth (it's definitely one of my top Shakespeare plays, if not my favorite), and I am so happy that this was the show I saw at the Globe.

Well, except for the part where I was unconscious. Yup, I was "that girl"... The one who passed out. Not at all from the blood, but because it was so darn hot and we were all sooooo tired. Okay Mom, okay Dad, don't worry. At this point, I'm great at knowing when it's going to happen so I sat down and put my head on my knee before fainting. Got some sparkling water and a chocolate bar at intermission and I was right back in the action. Now I can say not only that I saw Shakespeare at the Globe, but that I fainted during it too. :)