Blog 1 (Shakespeare)

'Julius Caesar' the play written by William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare, the talented and creative writer who has throughout centuries stunned many artists and people.. or did he? Was it him? Sources have argued that he was an actor payed to pretend it was him who wrote these plays while other sources insist that it was him as today's population assumes. Nether the less I will go by the majority of the vote and avoid conspiracy's against Shakespeare for this topic, however I find this theory interesting.

Julius Caesar was written in 1599. It tells the story of Julius Caesar the Roman dictator. Julius Caesar only appears in fives scenes during the play as the actual plot focus' on the assassination of him, planned and plotted by Brutus and Cassius. Brutus is probably the most frequent character and is challenged to choose between his loving friendship between him and Caesar, or his loyalty and nobleness to his country. 

During the time of Shakespeare Queen Elizabeth was on the throne and often attended Shakespeare's famous plays and seated on the higher balcony as this was considered the seating where the royals, and higher status rich people would watch the plays. On the ground you would have the groundlings which consisted of everything from prostitutes to pocket thieves.

The Elizabethan era was a time associated with Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603) and is often considered to be the golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of English poetry, music and literature. This was also the time during which Elizabethan theatre flourished, and William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of plays and theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the Spanish Armada was repulsed. It was also the end of the period when England was a separate realm before its royal union with Scotland.

Audience members had to leave the city of London to go and see a play as theatre building were not permitted to be built in London. A flag would signal that there would be a theatre play that day and people would cross the river to attend. The globe's stage was more like a thrust stage than a proscenium arch stage. People who were well off enough would actually pay to sit on part of the stage on the balcony's. I believe this could have been for a social meaning and merely sat there so that they could be seen in their luxurious clothes. These people could easily steal the limelight from the show and therefore the actors had to work hard to keep all members of the audience entertained and therefore there was no no back to the audience rule or forth wall. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF4NJrxu5Xo

The globe held around 3000 guests in it's 100 foot diameter back in 1599 when The Globe was built. It was built in Southwark on the south bank of London's River Thames by Richard Burbage. It was built by using wood and timbre that was taken from other theatre buildings. Nowadays for health and safety purposes The Globe theatre holds up to 1500. When I visited the Globe I found that I thought there were just the right amount of people in the audience, especially in the standing arena "The Pit" and could imagine that conditions of today are a lot more of higher standards. These numbers show just how things like health and saftey didn't matter in those days.

During our visit to the Globe I found that many of our class members weren't exactly looking forward to standing for 2 hours and 45 minutes watching a play that many people have different views on but nether the less was famous! As the day went on I think a lot of us started to be a little more enthusiastic about watching it espiecally when we got to take part in a workshop and start to get a better insight on how the actors would rehearse when the plays first started and how they would rehearse today! During the workshop our leader expressed how the actors of earlier times would only have about 3 rehearsals!! This stood out to me knowing that today we have weeks to months of rehearsals to polish and perfect! The fact that these actors learnt the script and managed to perform this showed how on point they must of been to achieve this. They used cue lines in order to help them learn when their line was! I also learnt that since their was no copyright laws in those days, in order to keep the play from being copied, Shakespeare would only give out the actors lines, instead of the whole script... hence the cue lines!

Julius Caesar is relevant to todays audiences because conflicts are going on in everyday life, no matter what century we are, no matter where we live.  The audience of that particular time may have related it to the monarch at the time. Audiences today may relate it to there everyday conflicts or maybe to something more obvious like wars, or perhaps parliament. 

Shakespeare was known to have written from 37 to 40 plays!

Quote below from :http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/numberofplays.html

Commedies :All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, Cymbeline, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Pericles, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale

Tragedies: Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus

Histories: 1,2, and 3 Henry VI, 1 and 2 Henry IV, King John, Henry V, Henry VIII, Richard II, Richard III