Jul 8

A Boisterous Farce

According to legend, Queen Elizabeth was so fond of the character Falstaff from Shakespeare’s Henry IV that she requested he appear in a play all his own. The result is The Merry Wives of Windsor, an uproarious comedy of manners, wherein the fat and pompous central character tries to seduce two wealthy housewives, only to have the tables turned by the clever women: “Discover what lies beneath the Elizabethan social order as Shakespeare’s raucous comedy … reveals its wild, mythic and daring underbelly in the Globe Theatre this summer.”

Shakespeare’s Globe

The Globe Theatre we see today is an exacting reconstruction of the building constructed by Shakespeare’s theatrical company in 1599. In a poetic coincidence, the original Globe burned down in 1613, just around the time that Shakespeare retired from the company (though it was rebuilt the following year and remained in active use until 1642, when the Puritan takeover of England led to theaters being torn down). Many of Shakespeare’s greatest plays were first produced at the Globe: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.

In reconstructing the Globe, designers aimed to recreate not just the building, but the style of theatrical performance from a bygone age. In Shakespeare’s day, theater wasn’t purely mimetic, performed behind a proscenium arch in front of illusionistic sets for a politely silent audience. It was instead interactive, performed on a stage thrust forward into the midst of a standing-room crowd whose raucous participation was part of the fun. Harvard Prof Steven Greenblatt explains more here: link. We’ll be part of that standing-room crowd, numbered among the “groundlings.” It’s a ton of fun—the actors invariably engage with the groundlings, addressing individuals when they speak asides, etc.

The play starts at 7:30, but aim to arrive a half hour early to ensure we get a decent spot on the floor. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, map.