I am not a theater person in the sense that I’ve never been in a play. Not a Christmas play or pageant. Not even a backyard play. And certainly not anything as an adult. It seems I was always much too busy chasing some ball around some field somewhere.
Yet, I love to watch a play. Or show. Live, or otherwise. I like to read stories, and as such, I like to see them acted out. The book always seems better, and many people would agree with that, in most cases. I think it is due to the fact that we are all “directors” and “producers” in our own little minds, so we “see” the scenes in a much different way than another person might see it in their production.
Nonetheless, there are some plays that simply start out as plays. The playwrights, as they are called, write the plays. Take our good man William Shakespeare. He traipsed around this Earth, staring out, on April 26, 1564. He carried on with this or that, writing stories, drinking wine. He did this until April 23, 1616. That was a blink of 52 years, with historians still wondering about the cause of his death, though many say his hearty appetite for alcohol might have contributed.
He wrote a lot of plays during that time. Macbeth. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet. I could go on and on, as he was quite prolific. But at some point, he wrote Henry VIII.
It was at one of these performances of Henry VIII, on this date, in fact. The day was June 29th, 1613, when his place of creation, The Globe Theatre, caught fire and burnt to the ground. During the show, they fired off some small cannons with no balls inside of them. Big firecrackers. And yes, they were using real gunpowder. The roof, made of thatching, went up like a light. The whole thing burned down in around an hour. Thankfully, no one was hurt. But one man’s pants caught fire. Luckily, someone close to him threw some beer over the flames and put him out.
I wonder if he was a liar. Liar. Liar. Pants on fire.
Anyway, that is the remarkable historical event on today’s date. There is a new Globe Theatre. I’ll have you know. It was completed in 1997 and is the third Globe Theatre to have been built on the Southbank of the Thames.
The earlier versions of the Globes were located a bit further back from the river. The original theatre was constructed in 1599. It stood until the fire. It was rebuilt a year later. After a time, it was turned into tenement buildings in 1644. Apparently, during those years, the Puritans had big fears about stage plays, and London theaters were forced to close in 1642.
Humph! Puritans. Giving us Intermissions when we really don’t want or need them.
Anyway.
We can learn a lot from the theater. It imitates life, it seems.
As the old verse goes,
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
And wouldn’t you know it?
I keep forgetting my lines.
============
“What is that unforgettable line?”
― Samuel Beckett
===========
“Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
===========
“Act well your part; there all the honour lies.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
============
The play. Not sandbox play. Acting play.
