The Globe Theatre, take one By Andreas Potowski, Yvette Kromski and Verena Krüger On Tuesday, the 8th of September 1998, the two English «Achievement Courses” accompanied by Mr Suckrau and Mr Weinhold went to the Globe Theatre. Nick Hutchinson from the Royal Shakespeare Company (the world’s most famous troupe for Shakespearean plays) waited for us at the Globe rehearsal stage, which resides in a separate building next door from the «real” Globe, and told us about his work. He first spoke about the financial problems of theatre companies then and now. Because of those problems, the time for rehearsals in Britain has always been very short and the theatres have always had to change their programmes every six weeks. In England, theatres to the most part are financed by the entrance fees of the audience. Mr Hutchinson explained to us how Shakespeare wanted his plays to be presented. The stage directions were included in the dialogues, so the other actors had to listen to each other very carefully to know what they had to do. In Shakespeare’s times, actors were only given their own text passages and a few keywords preceding them so that they knew when to start speaking their parts. In the Elizabethan Age, there were only male actors (so even Romeo and Juliet was played by two men!). After this introduction we went over to the Globe Theatre. There Mr Hutchinson showed us the stage and told us that the building was the only one in today’s London which was made of wood and had a thatched roof. At the end of his presentation he thanked us for our attention, and we left the theatre until the play began. To remind you of the play: The Merchant of Venice contains two different stories. On the one hand, there is Antonio who wants to help his friend Bassanio to marry Portia. For this reason, he borrows money from the Jew Shylock and pawns to him one pound of meat from his body. On the other hand, there is the love story between Bassanio and Portia. They marry and Antonio doesn’t have to forfeit his pawn to Shylock because of a clever advocate. The play The Merchant of Venice started at 2 p. m. It took «only” three hours although we were told that it would last two hours. That provided us with a good opportunity to test our endurance because, as »groundlings« who had only paid to see the play but not to sit in the covered stalls, we had to stand in one place before the stage in the open air for the entire duration of the play. Nevertheless, the play and the atmosphere were not as bad as we had expected. Another reason for this was that it didn’t rain during the performance. Our general impression of the afternoon was that the actors and actresses were quite good and the historical aspects of the stage and the theatre in Shakespeare’s time were shown very well, but we all would rather have paid a few marks more for having a seat so we could have concentrated on the play much better.

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