Connecting from London--Day 5

      Hi, Families!  Today was Shakespeare Day for the DeCarolis family here in London.  Emily feels about the theater the way I feel about books, so she made us promise when we decided to visit here that we would devote one day to visiting the Globe Theater, touring the theater and the surrounding areas, and seeing an actual Shakespeare play performed by a Shakespeare acting troupe.  Today was Shakespeare Day.
       Now, London has this big river running through it, essentially cutting it into two parts.  There are MANY bridges that cross this river,  called the Thames, as you can see in the map below.

 

The white lines crossing the blue river are bridges.  The Globe Theater is on the south side of the river.  (See close-up)                                   

You guys are still a little young to know much about William Shakespeare, but trust me when I say that he was VERY important in the world of the theater.  He wrote many famous plays, and he caused the original Globe Theater to be built in 1599 for Shakespeare and his troupe, Lord Chamberland's Men, to perform shows in.  William wrote the plays, and the troupe acted them out.
      We left our hotel early (8:00), and grabbed a city bus to the nearest tube station.  From there, we took a tube or two across town to the river.  We walked along the edge of the Thames for a while, and then came upon the Globe Theater.

Outside of the new Globe Theater

This man (an actor) took us on a tour of the Globe Theater, and told us all about it.  He was very funny, too, as you might guess from the face he is making.

The Globe is "open" to the weather

The theater is an "open-air" theater, which means if it rains, you get wet.  The show is NOT canceled due to weather, since the actors have a roof over the stage.

This is the inside of the theater.  There are three floors with bench seating, and the seating surrounds the stage, so that some people are actually looking at the BACK of  the actors.  The actors know this, and continuously rotate their position on the stage.  The "seats" are hard and quite uncomfortable, so you can rent cushions if you choose.

The "floor space" in front of the stage is available each day (you have to stand for the length of the play, which is generally 2 1/2 to 4 hours long) for L5 ($7.50), and they often have several hundred people who choose to take advantage of the cheap prices to go to the theater often.  The actors on stage talk to them (and make fun of them for being in the "stink" seats), and two members of the standing audience were brought up on stage during the play I watched--the Merchant of Venice!  One of the main characters was played by an American actor that I had seen before, so that was cool!
          We had our "fancy supper" of the trip tonight because we ate in the restaurant right next door to the Globe.  It was "okay", but not anything really special--just expensive!
          That's it.  That's all we did today.  I'm feeling much better (no fever last night, though the cough is hanging on)!  Tomorrow is our last day to "do things" in London because we are leaving here Saturday morning.  Boy, the days have just zipped by!  We plan to go to Sherlock Holmes's house at 221B Baker Street, and then go down the street to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.  We probably will spend quite a while there.  I'm told they have a wax figure of President Obama, Star Wars characters, and Marvel characters, too!  Let's hope I can take pictures for you! (Actually, Dr. D. and Emily are taking all of the pictures, but are letting me borrow them for this blog.) 'Bye for tonight!