Dear Marcus,
As I informed you last letter, I would be going to a Shakespeare play called Romeo and Juliet. Well, I have just seen this wonderful play and would love to tell you about my experience at the Globe Theatre. To start off, the architecture was just beautiful. The building was built in a circle shape, with roofs over the outside walls, and the middle was open to the sky. There were three rows of seats on the walls. These were called the lower gallery, the middle gallery, and the upper gallery. The stage was positioned protruding out from the entrance of the theatre into the middle. There were many people standing up alongside me in the yard (right in front of the stage). The theatre was 9 meters high. The stage was 1.5 meters high. Two posts held up a cover for the actors and their expensive costumes from the weather. Thank god it wasn’t raining, because there was no cover over my head! There were seats on the stage balcony itself, and they were considered the best seats because you could hear all the actors loud and clear. Here was where the very rich, nobility, and the upper class watched the play from. Additional balconies on the left and right of the lord’s room were called the gentlemen’s room, and these accommodated rich patrons of the theatre. The stage was about 13 meters across and 8 meters long. There were two trapdoors on the stage, one on the floor of the stage and one on the stage balcony. The upper one was used to represent heaven and the lower one to represent hell. In the heavens, a selection of ropes and rigging would allow for special effects such as flying or dramatic entrances. Special effects used included the use of cannons, trapdoors wires, ropes, harnesses, fireworks, flowers and petals, music, live animals, bones, intestines and blood of dead animals. The costumes used in the globe theatre are used to represent the ‘status’ of whoever the actor is playing. Back then, the clothes you wore generally determined your class. Although sometimes the costumes could be reused, they were very expensive to make more of. The theatre spent about 300 pounds a year on costumes, that’s crazy! They really try hard to make their performances the best they could. For women they used wigs, but the style and colour of the hair would show status as well as their clothes. An observation I made is that all the actors were men. Even the women!? The men playing the women cannot have their voice broken or they sound too much like a man. I just remembered! Something quite funny happened! It was quite hilarious when Juliet’s voice broke! Everyone went silent and he ran off the stage red as a tomato from the embarrassment. They had to get a new actor for her! The play was very dramatic, like most of the other plays I’ve heard of. While lower class characters which was very ordinary, Upper class characters would speak stylised, rhythmic speech patterns. The play was represented in a very style-reliant way. Since most other people cannot read and write, I noticed that a flag was raised since the afternoon and stayed raised until the show was completely finished. Pretty genius! The general audience (commoners) at the Globe Theatre were called groundlings. This was because after paying the fee of one penny they would be able to stand in the pit in front of the stage. I thought there may be a chance to even see the queen there! I was wrong. It turns out she only watches plays in private playhouses and doesn’t attend amphitheatres. The nobles would pay 5 pence to sit in the highly desired lords’ room. The gentry would sit in the galleries on cushions. The richest nobles could even sit on a chair beside the stage itself. Thomas Platter, 1599 “There are separate galleries and there one stands more comfortably and moreover can sit, but one pays more for it. Thus anyone who remains on the level standing pays only one English penny: but if he wants to sit, he is let in at a farther door, and there he gives another penny. If he desires to sit on a cushion in the most comfortable place of all, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen then he gives yet another English penny at another door. And in the pauses of the comedy food and drink are carried round amongst the people and one can thus refresh himself at his own cost” Well Marcus, that’s about all for my experience. I hope I’ve persuaded you to perhaps come with me next time?
Sincerely, Borris
Bibliography:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Globe-Theatre#ref248150
http://www.bardstage.org/globe-theatre-special-effects.htm
https://teach.shakespearesglobe.com/fact-sheet-costumes-and-cosmetics
https://prezi.com/d50u2v4zpqik/elizabethan-acting-style/
http://www.bardstage.org/globe-theatre-flags.htm
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-theatre-audiences.htm
Ilo's blog 
Good work and you cover plenty of detail. Last times I felt you were listing the details rather than re-living the experience, but nevertheless a good effort.
A – 7
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