Shakespeare in London

London was good medicine for my obsession for historic buildings on the eve of my return to the western United States. London's historic buildings would probably be more meaningful to me than some of the others I encountered this year but, in London, I didn't much notice them due to my love of theater. When I visited London years ago, I went to three musicals--including Les Miserables. Between that visit and this, I heard that a replica of the Globe theater had been built and have long wanted to see a play there. During this visit, I managed to make it to three. In between, I went on the tour and spent time reading the exhibits about the original Globe theater.

As a Shakespeare enthusiast, it was satisfying to learn something about the setting of most of Shakespeare's plays. First, why the theater was where it was: The original Globe was located across the river from the city which made it easier for the company to operate at a time when the Puritans were adamently against theater and the local authorities in London succumbed to the pressure and, inconsistently, applied restrictions. I'm not very clear about theater-politics in those days (royalty sponsored plays and Elizabeth was a Shakespeare fan too) but it being across the river next to the bars and brothels was a strategy to allow the play to go on. How the theater go there in the first place is also interesting. The business guy had a theater on the London side of the river on rented land and when the lease was over, he technically had the right to the building but, in practice, the building would come under the control of the land owner. So one night when the river was frozen over and the land owner was out of town, the theater business guy and some buddies took the building apart and moved it across the river and rebuilt it as the Globe--safe from the increasingly restrictive anti-theater regulations.

The second thing I learned about Shakespeare plays by having visited the Globe was pointed out during the tour of the place. It involves the ambitiousness of Elizabethan theater. A commentary I read soon afterwards explains it well:

Elizabethan theater ... [involves] a complex playing area, with a
central platform, an alcove or discovery space at the rear, flanked by doors, a trap door leading to a cellarage below, a balcony or balustraded space above, with possibly a second level above that,
and on the platform itself a pari of great columns that divide the stage. We have a versatile, multiple playing space which can represent locales such as a field, a castle, a city wall, a ship's deck, a forest, a
desert, a cave, a cell, a tavern, a hall of state, or a street, in free
alternation or succession. Characters can wander in from one
door and out another, lean out of windows or emerge from the alcove, skulk behind pillars or peer from over arrases, and they may occupy two or more parts of the stage simultaneously. ... [Such as] in historical plays, when besieging armies stationed on the platform challenge the defenders of a town or castle situated above ... other theaters aim at compression and selectivity, at making a little stand for a lot. The Elizabethans wish to drag the whole lot bodily onto the stage. The other theaters hedge themselves about with exclusions and taboos. The really exciting actions, the violence, the sensationalism, the amorous encounters, the magical occurrences, all happen, as Victor Hugo complained, frustratingly offstage. Only the Elizabethans, with
their split-level stage, theirm dumb shows, gods, and ghosts,
their gluttony for spectacular effects, try to make everying at once
visible, audible, and palpable" (Jonas A. Barish, "Multiple Scenes,
Characters, and Plots in Elizabethan Drama" 61-64 in Elizabethan Drama, Laura K Egendorf, editor).

The tour guide also pointed out that the Globe theater was destroyed by fire during a performance of Henry VIII. The company decided that they had to pull out all the stops to depict the founder of the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth's father so they used a real cannon--the firing of which lit the thatched roof on fire and that was the end of the original Globe. I guess a case can be made for keeping it simple.

One of the interesting options for theater-goers in the Elizabethan era was to pay a minimal admission and stand up through the performance--to be a "groundling." This tradition was resurrected with the reconstruction of the edifice. When I heard about the modern version of groundlings, I had heard that they, like their Elizabethan era counterparts, yelled at the actors and that the actors responded to them but, unfortunately, the groundlings I witnessed were much more well behaved. I liked the idea of saving a substantial number of pounds for each ticket but figured that my hosts (who let me stay with them a bit outside London) deserved seats. I also wanted to save my legs for walking around town and rather than for standing for a few three hour Shakespeare plays. On my last day in the city I decided to go back for another Shakespeare play and would have done the "groundling" thing but none were available so I sat again.

If I make it back to London, I'll probably trade the ideal setting for the best acting and try to catch a play by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I'd also like to make the ultimate Shakespearean pilgrimage to Shakespeare's home neighborhood at Stratford upon Avon.

When in Rome

I finally succumbed to the enticement to stop off in Italy on a trip home from Israel. I looked into spending time in Venice and Ravenna and perhaps fitting in some cycling in the Po river valley but finally settled on a more conventional itinerary--Rome and Florence. My first impression of Rome was how quiet is was. I still don't know if my ears were confused after the flight (did I sneeze at high altitude?) or if it really is exceptionally quiet for a big city.

I walked from the airport to the train station and bought my ticket and noticed the train to downtown leaving. So I waited for the next train and hoped that I could still fit in the tourist bus ride around the city and the church and museum that I noticed were near my hostel. The train stopped for a while in the middle and took nearly an hour longer than it should have so I was only able to fit in the tour bus ride. It was the first time I had been on something like that and found it to be a great way to get oriented to the city.

Over the next three days I did a pretty good job of maximizing my exposure to Rome's top sites. The arch of Constantine was at the top of my list and I was prepared with an explanation of what was depicted on every corner of the triumphal arch. I took corresponding pictures and could quickly be prepared with a slide show were anyone to care to hear about it. A couple of days later I caught a different view of the arch from the Colosseum.

The forum is like an old graveyard for historic buildings. An archaeologists dream which I feared would be a tourist's nightmare. I went there on something like European historical site appreciation day. That meant everyone could go there for free and it seemed like plenty of folks took up the offer. I didn't think anything of it until I asked for an audio guide and was told that there were none available. I hadn't read anything about all those pilars lying around but I decided to walk around and try to make sense of the place. Fortunately I found the Arch of Titus and played the part of the Hebrew University student and noted the famous depiction of the manorah that the Romans took from Jerusalem's temple. The Arch of Titus is a lot less elaborate than that of Constantine so I had a more brief absorption period but definitely allowed it time to sink in. The forum has a lot more and I even figured out what a few other things were about but I'm afraid my appreciation of the famous hills and the figurative graveyard could have been more profound.

After having exercised my imagination with the idea of a hippodromo (chariot race track) in Istanbul, running across Rome's was nice. It was interesting to see that the track that the chariots raced around continues to be preserved by some of the more fit of the city's inhabitants. Other than the jogging track, there is little remaining--I'm sure most tourists don't take note of it.

There are various other monuments that I enjoyed seeing and which I'll probably write about as part of this entry later but one of the more memorable experiences involved catching up with an Italian friend who was a fellow student of the Hebrew University and who lives in Rome. We met for dinner and talked about contemporary Italy as well as the Europe (she's an activist advocating the E.U. becoming like the U.S.). Then we hopped on a bus back towards the central bus station as our hostel was very near to it. We tried to get her to explain to us how to pay but she explained that nobody in Rome pays for such things as bus fares. In fact, she noted that the national airline's trouble is largely due to so many Italians being able to fly free due to their being a distant relative of someone who works for the airlines or who works for a complany who has a contract with the airlines. That was one of those mind warping ideas that I still can't get myself to really believe. In any case, I'll confess that I didn't pay for the bus ride--when in Rome, right?

Athens' Golden Age & Byzantine Period

After Byzantine Architecture ecstacy in Thessaloniki, I resolved to turn my attention to Ancient Greece--after all, I was heading to Athens. My travel companions and I went to the acropolis the first day. At that time, I found the Erechtheum more meaningful and more charming than the Parthenon. As we were preparing to leave, looking at one of the two theaters south of the acropolis, I showed one of the park workers my ticket to that night's performance of a greek tragedy and asked where it was. The answer shocked and disappointed. I had assumed the theater was in Athens but it was a couple of hours out of town. We reasoned together for a few minutes and determined to cut our losses and stay in Athens. There was plenty to see of course including the Theater of Dionysus which partially satisfied my theater loving side but not quite enough.


While the Parthenon didn't immediately strike an aesthetic chord in me, the idea of the statue of Athena (Athena Parthenos) by a sculptor named Phidias did. I longed to see the replica, known as the Varvakios Athena, in the National Archeological Museum of Athens. The Parthenon itself became an exercise in imagination as I tried to piece the parts of the building together. This extended to London where I saw the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.

My level of interest in the building was high but becoming aware that it served as a Byzantine Church dedicated to Mary made it considerably more meaningful. From Istanbul, through Bulgaria, to Thessaloniki and even into Athens the theme remained the same. I was interested in Byzantium and there was no escape. I embrased my fate--aware that reality is multi-faceted and a place like Athens has a present as well as various pasts and that it can be appreciated through various lenses. The same thinking that led me to embraced Jerusalem's Mamluk era.


There were a few of Athens' Byzantine Churches that have proven memorable. One, the Church of Kapnikarea, is in the middle of a street. When Ermou Street was being planned, the idea was to knock down the old church but preservationists fought to save it and the street was built around it. The Church of Kapnikarea shows what the impressive Byzantine Museums in both Thessaloniki and Athens tell--at least some Greek folk value their Byzantine heritage.



I found the church of the Holy Apostles in the Ancient Agora to be the most meaningful of Athens' Byzantine Churches. This church, which was built in the late 10th or early 11th century, commemorates the apostle Paul preaching in the agora to the Greeks as recorded in Acts 17: "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an alter with the inscription, to the unknown god. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." Along with being meaningful in commemorating Paul's preaching, the church's design is attractive and it's setting is pleasing.


Another memorable church is the Church of Theotokos Gorgoepikoos and Ayios Eleytherios. This church is unique in it's being constructed of marble as opposed to the typical Byzantine brick.

I spent enough time in Athens to get a taste for other periods as well but the very ancient didn't excite me much and I wasn't there long enough to absorb much of the modern--seeing the original modern Olympic stadium reminded me that the Olympics has ceased to mean much to me. The Roman period ruins were impressive--more grandiose than the real Greek stuff--but not as meaningful as the era of Plato and Sophocles.