The Globe Theater
I booked a 9:30 am tour of Shakespeare’s Globe theater on-line well before I knew how exhausted we’d be on the last day of our trip.
We cajoled and harassed our teen daughter out of bed and out the door into the deserted streets of the soho district. Finding breakfast at 7:30 am was challenging. The all-night London pub crawlers who were still up with the dawn had already staked out the best places well before we arrived. Fortunately, you only have to throw a rock and you will eventually hit a cafe that isn’t has hip and cool as the one you just tried to get into.
Urged forward by a bitingly cold wind, we arrived just in the nick of time at the Globe where our gregarious actor/tour guide was laying the scene of London in the 1500’s. Seeing the Globe was fabulous, and our guide was funny, informative, and deeply invested.
Our daughter, a Shakespeare summer camp veteran, was jazzed and excited to share the experience with her theater buddies back home.
After the tour, I approached the actor who had been our guide and asked him if the tour gig was mandatory, or extra credit for him. He shared that they joined the Globe company for life, and as their careers offered them other opportunities they keep up their responsibilities to the company by acting as guides, ticket takers, and promoters. He had stepped away from the Globe for a number of months to take an MSNBC gig in a 70’s detective period series – so he was on tour duty.
Tips for visiting Shakespeare’s Globe theater:
If you have even the tiniest soft soft for theater, Shakesepeare, or history a visit to the Globe is a must. It is really really cool. You can visit in two of ways - sign up for a guided tour, or see a show. The Globe web site makes it easy to do either one of these, but plan early, shows sell out, and the tours for reasonable times disappear quickly.
The tour guides are all actors from the Globe troupe, and are humous, knowledgeable, and very passionate and engaging. Our tour guide was almost a better experience than seeing the historical re-creation of the Globe in person.
