In 1973, when Sam Wanamaker was beginning to establish his project in London, he received this statement from Peter Moro, the Key Advisor to the Arts Council on new theatre proposals:
Even if it were possible to establish what exactly the Globe was like, we know enough to suggest that such a theatre would be totally unacceptable to actor, audience and the local authority. An audience standing closely packed in their thousands, under an open sky, surrounded by a wooden structure with no exits, no lavatories, no bars, to say nothing of actors without proper dressing room facilities, surely is not a working preposition …Apart from a stunt, and possible tourist attraction, I see no future in faking the past. (Day, 67)
Although Moro is clearly exaggerating his statement (e.g. no exits), he does have a point. Perhaps it was partially this statement and others like it, which led to the decision to reduce the audience size from 3000 to a much more manageable 1500.
A member of the conferences held by C. Walter Hodges in the late 1970's in Detroit, John Russell Brown gave this explanation for the desire to rebuild the Globe, contrasting the views of Moro:
Building a replica of the Globe will give us a real and fuller knowledge of the original building as well as an opportunity to experiment in the staging of Shakespeare's plays and so, perhaps, to discover more about those plays - which are, after all, the deepest reason for our interest in the Globe. (Hodges, 25)
The contrast of these two arguments is one that one can see in almost every argument for or against the new Globe. Those in favor of the Globe describe the setting (physical structure) in which Shakespeare's plays were meant to be performed, while those against point to the conditions (audience mentality) of the original theatre and argue that these conditions can not be recreated.
This argument against the Globe is further detailed by Terence Hawkes in his article, Harry Hunks, Super Star, printed in the publication Around the Globe:
The new Globe can never take on the particular cultural role of the old one because the culture has irretrievably gone. This means that the new theatre can never under any circumstances recreate the single most crucial element of the Elizabethan playhouse: the audience. Like it or not, modern playgoers will almost certainly be literate, multinational, and inevitably, if the playwright is 'Shakespeare' steeled for an encounter with Great Art. An Elizabethan audience, on the other hand, was by and large non- (or pre) literate, mainly British and would have been surprised at our estimation of the playwright. Unaware that it was in the presence of Great Art, that audience was looking for what we would call mere entertainment. (Hawkes)
|
 |
|
| Lesson 6.1 |
|
Lesson 6.3 |