In Flames Theatre of the Living Arts December 12
Among them were the triumphant late dramasThe Winter's Tale (get-go performed at the Globe in May 1611) andThe Tempest (first performed in November 1611). Shakespeare was doing well financially, too: that March, he had bought an flat in the Blackfriars complex, near the company'southward indoor theatre. Information technology was his first property investment in London, adding to a substantial portfolio back domicile in Stratford-upon-Avon.
He was also hard at work on a new play: he and a younger playwright, John Fletcher, were finalising a script calledAll is Truthful, a historical thriller based on the divorce of Henry 8 and Catherine of Aragon (to modern audiences, information technology is usually named after its hero,Henry Eight). Packed with spectacular pageantry and effects, it was a new style for the playwright – possibly a new kickoff.
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That summertime,All is True finally went on phase. On 29 June 1613, in the mid-afternoon, the Globe playhouse on Bankside was packed; the performance, probably the play's 3rd or fourth outing, seemed to be going smoothly. When a gear up of stage cannons were fired most the finish of Human activity I to mark the archway of King Henry for a masque scene at Cardinal Wolsey's residence, barely anyone in the crowd noticed that a piece of flaming material from one of the cannons had landed on the theatre'south thatched roof. Even when smoke began to scroll up, no 1 paid much attention; in the words of one bystander, "their optics [were] more circumspect to the prove".
But within minutes the burn down had run around the inside of the roof "like a railroad train", and the Globe was doomed. As the flames consumed the all-wooden structure there was a panicked evacuation, so rapid that a number of people left their cloaks behind. Ane man apparently had his clothes assail burn down and had to throw a bottle of ale over himself. According to some other business relationship, someone else was burned later attempting to save a kid. No one is reported to have died, but for Shakespeare's playhouse, the about famous theatre in England, it was the cease. The day was hot and dry, and inside little more than an hr just smoking ruins were left. The burn down raged so intensely that a house side by side door went up too.
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That we know and then much about the most infamous burn in theatre history indicates what major news it was at the time: several eyewitnesses noted the event, and information technology must have been the talk of Jacobean London. Much of this data derives from a letter written by the diplomat and politician Sir Henry Wotton a few days later, which recorded the catastrophe in remarkable detail, from the "paper or other stuff" that prepare fire to the thatch to the unfortunate theatregoer who "had his breeches fix on fire, that would peradventure have broyled him, if he had not by the do good of a provident wit, put it out with a bottle of ale".
The tone of this account is jocular – maybe because Wotton seems to have been irked by common players depictingrevered historical figures such Henry Viii and Key Wolsey, and felt that Shakespeare and his theatre had got their just deserts. Theatre-antisocial puritans couldn't assist exultation, as well, detecting divine vengeance in the "sudden fearful burning". Not long afterward the conflagration a street ballad appeared, marking the outcome (its writer is unknown). Its refrainpuns on the championship of the play that had caused the tragedy:
This fearful fire began above,
A wonder strange and true,
And to the stage-house did remove,
Equally round as tailor'southward clew;
And burnt downwards both beam and snag,
And did not spare the silken flag.
Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and stillall this is truthful.
Indeed, the burning of the Earth was anything but a one-act for Shakespeare and his young man shareholders in the King's Men. Not only would the theatre have to exist rebuilt – in an era before buildings insurance, they would have to human foot the cost – it would need to be washed in a bustle, because every twenty-four hours without a playhouse depleted their reserves even more. The company could continue to perform at the Blackfriars, but that theatre only seated a few hundred ticket-buyers; at the open-air Globe, they could cram in as many as three,000.
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It has been speculated that the daze of the burn down destroyed Shakespeare's health; equally one of the authors ofAll is True, he might even take felt somehow responsible, particularly every bit the burn was acquired by a exhibitionistic slice of staging (it was more than usual to fire cannons for battle scenes rather than for the entrance of a monarch). Certainly, when the King's Men banded together to pay £1,400 for the erection of the new Globe, which took a year to build – this fourth dimension with a fireproof tiled roof – Shakespeare was not among them, having apparently sold his shares in the company in the interim.
Shakespeare'south final script,The Ii Noble Kinsmen, some other collaboration with Fletcher, was probably written later on that year; its Prologue refers to "our losses" in what looks wistfully similar a reference to the burn. By the end of the twelvemonth, Shakespeare seems to take been based full-time in Stratford and engaged in bitter litigation over his state rights. His writing career was over. Two years later, in April 1616, he was dead.
Andrew Dickson is a broadcaster and author. His books include The World Guide to Shakespeare(2016) and Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Effectually Shakespeare's Earth(2015)
This article was originally published by HistoryExtra in 2018
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Source: https://www.historyextra.com/period/elizabethan/globe-theatre-fire-london-shakespeare-william-facts/
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