The Great Globe Itself

We have been continuing to work in our house and yard during these Stay-at-Home days.  One project that has been long delayed is where to erect the beautiful steel handrail that has been propped up against the stone wall by our driveway for many months, rescued from the scrap metal dumpster at the County's trash transfer station.  There is nearly 25 feet of it in all, it is very heavy, and it was probably custom-made and cost a pretty penny.  Why anybody would throw it all in a dumpster I have no idea, but I also have no idea why the perfectly good wheelbarrows, windows, doors, and other building materials which I have rescued over the years would have faced a similar fate but for someone not too proud to retrieve it and put it to another use.

Martha thought it might look nice a foot or two back from the rock wall, in a single line, but I was not convinced.  “A fence should enclose something,” I argued.  “But it is beautiful,” she said,  Very true.  As William Morris once said, "Have nothing in your houses (or yards, I would add) that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."  The only way to know for sure would be to temporarily place it there, attached to various poles and stakes, and see how it looked.  Now I have to admit that it is growing on me, especially if the posts were 4 X 4, all the exact same height, and each topped with something decorative like a birdhouse.

We have been watching some wonderful old movies in the evenings, and Martha discovered this weekend that Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London is streaming some of its plays as the National Theater Live has been doing (See April 2 post).  This is a real treat for a lover of the Bard, and the theater itself is just beautiful, right on  the banks of the Thames and modeled after the original open-air Globe theater where the plays were originally performed.  Some scholars even think that Shakespeare was referencing the theater itself in Prospero's famous speech toward the end of The Tempest:

". . . . .These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yeah all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

 I watched the first play last night, which happened to be Hamlet, my favorite and surely the most famous play every written.  Directed by Michelle Terry, who also played the part of Hamlet, it was a riveting performance on a stage that was so close to the audience that some of them were propping their elbows there.

I was not surprised that Hamlet was played by a woman - last year I saw Helen Mirren play the part of Prospero (she called herself Prospera) in The Tempest.  But in what was described as a "beyond gender" production, Horatio was also played by a woman and Ophelia was played by a man, (a little unsuccessfully, I thought).  I remembered that the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt had famously played Hamlet as long ago as 1899.

That is the most wonderful thing about the genius of Shakespeare - his plays can be adapted and re-imagined in countless creative ways, sometimes in modern dress or on bare stages.  That is why his plays still live and breathe 400 years after they were written.  I am looking forward to seeing more of them in the coming Stay-at-Home weeks and months.