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There. The Thames. Welcome to London in the wettest February in recorded history.
Looking down rover from Waterloo Bridge towards St Paul's. The Dome of St Paul's of course
on the same side as the St Paul's Cathedral that Shakespeare knew but not the same building.
And just beyond Blackfriars Bridge, which is the next bridge down, a little further
round is the site of The Globe, now more or less behind the Financial Times Building and
just round there is the replica Globe that opened in 1997.
ook back up river there are the Houses of Parliament, incorporating Westminster Hall,
a building that features in some of Shakespeare's History Plays. There's the London Eye, that
great ferris wheel which we know Shakespeare never travelled on. Just up there, just to
the right of the towers of Westminster Abbey is the Ministry of Defence Building, which
sits on top of the old Whitehall Main Hall, which is where we know Shakespeare's company
performed, where they played for James I. But actually the building I'm interested is
that one.
The one that conveniently has the words National Theatre Box Office just flashing past it.
Right, before I die of pneumonia, let me mention a couple of things about Hamlet.
I wanted to bring up two today. One about the National and one about pirates.
I'm in London because in 2016 it will be the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and
there's going to be an enormous event in Stratford and then in London called the World Shakespeare
Congress. Hosted in Stratford, by the Shakespeare Institute, by the Royal Shakespeare Company
and by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and then in London by Shakespeare's Globe and
Kings College London. I've been at one of our planning meetings.
This year, in 2014, it's the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth and to celebrate that
there will be an enormous parade in Stratford on April 26th. The Saturday just after his
birthday. If you happen to be in Stratford come along and I'll be giving a lifetime achievement
award to Sir Nicholas Hytner, who used to run the National Theatre until very recently.
And of course directed Rory Kinnear as Hamlet, just a couple of years ago.
Now Hamlet has been symbolically enormously important to the National. When the National
Theatre of Great Britain company was finally set up in 1964, it opened at the Old Vic with
a production of Hamlet directed by Laurence Olivier, who of course had already done his
Hamlet movie and it starred Peter O'Toole.
Nobody now remembers it as a particularly good Hamlet but it was very important that
the National should start with a Hamlet. When they moved to their own purpose built concrete
building in 1976, they opened that with a performance in the big auditorium, the Olivier
Auditorium, of Hamlet, directed by Peter Hall and this time starring Albert Finney.
National theatres cling to Hamlet, it's the sort of emblem of theatrical tradition as
well as the play in which every actor has to establish themselves and as we heard a
little from Jonathan Slinger, this week on the course.
Right, last thing quickly before I dissolve and that's I wanted to talk about pirates.
A few of you on the comments pages over the last few weeks have mentioned what a corny
plot device it is that Hamlet nearly gets to England to be executed but manages to get
back to Denmark thanks to some convenient off stage pirates. Shakespeare, though he
doesn't mind taking shortcuts using piratesthere's that conveniently dead pirate who turns up
in Measure for Measure. There's some very handy pirates who turn up in Pericles and
accidentally rescue the heroine.
But I think pirates would have looked a lot less corny in 1600 than they do to us after
Treasure Island and after Pirates of the Caribbean, especially given that Hamlet opened on the
banks of the Thames. And although the river looks comparatively empty now except of mud
in Shakespeare's time it was still think with boats. Below London Bridge, just a little
further round from the globe it was full of trading vessels. The fact that the mouth of
the Thames is dead opposite the mouth of the Rhine is what made european trade possible
and what made this such a fantastically successful city.
So you were practically on wharf when you were at the Globe and just up the mouth of
the Thames there were plenty of real life pirates. In fact, so closely interwoven was
piracy and the life of the city and even the life of the city's theatres that one of Shakespeare's
colleagues, a playwright called Lording Barry, who wrote one play, a very good comedy called
Ram Alley but most of the rest of his career he actually spent working as a pirate.
So, piracy was not that far out of the realms of everyday life for the first audiences of
Hamlet as it is for us. Anyway, I'm going to go and take shelter now. Have a great week
and coming up in our last week of the course. At last, 'To be or not to be' with Pippa Nixon,
who's wonderful. So enjoy next week and I'll see you soon. Bye!