Hamlet Globe to Globe: Two Years, 193,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play - Softcover

Dromgoole, Dominic

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802127967 ISBN 13: 9780802127969

Publisher: Grove Press, 2018

Synopsis

Two years, 190,000 miles, 197 countries, one play. For the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth the Globe Theatre in London undertook an unparalleled journey to share Hamlet with the entire world. The tour was the brainchild of Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the Globe, and in Hamlet Globe to Globe, Dromgoole takes readers along with him on this wildly ambitious expedition.

From performing in sweltering deserts, capital and remote cities, heaving marketplaces and on Pacific islands, and despite food poisoning in Mexico, the threat of ambush in Somaliland, an Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and political upheaval in Ukraine, the Globe’s players tirelessly pushed on. They carried their own props, instruments, and costumes throughout the journey, and could construct an entire set in less than two hours. Dromgoole introduces this impressive cast of sturdy souls, recounting the highs and lows of their tour, paying witness to Shakespeare’s power to transcend borders and bring people closer together.

Dromgoole also shows us the world through the prism of Shakespeare and why, in its mystery, it resonates so widely―how a sixteenth-century play can touch the lives of men and women in Sudan, citizens of Beijing, and Syrian refugees alike. Through the lens of this epic theatrical journey, Dromgoole gleans new insight into Shakespeare’s masterpiece, exploring the play’s history, its meaning, and its pleasures, and offering a dramatic and heartfelt testament to Shakespeare’s enduring presence on the modern stage.

About this title

About the Author:

Dominic Dromgoole was the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London from 2006 to 2016. He is the author of Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life and The Full Room: An A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting. He has written for the Guardian, Telegraph, and Sunday Times (UK).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Translated into too many languages to count, and performed more times than Shakespeare ate hot dinners, and cold ones, or drew breath for that matter, Hamlet is one of those rare documents, which can truly be said to have brought the world closer together. In 1608, on board a ship called the Dragon, Hamlet was performed by its crew off the coast of Sierra Leone for a group of visiting dignitaries. The crew remembered enough of the play from what they had seen at the Globe to shamble together a show without a script. Several months later, they did the same in Indonesia. Within ten years of its first performance, groups of English actors, known collectively as the English Comedians, were performing it across Northern Europe in broad, hyper physical productions. Since then it has played everywhere, in theatres, fields, caves, hovels and palaces.

It has tested millions of the greatest actors and actresses, leaving some exhilarated with triumph and some desolate with failure, and all hungering for more. It has been recorded, televised and filmed over and over and over again. It is recited in schoolrooms, quoted in boardrooms, mumbled by lovers, pondered on by sages, argued over by critics, passed on from parent to child, cursed by the student, wept over by the spectator, and stored in the heart as a fortifying secret by millions of us afraid of the bruising of the world. It is part of the fabric that surrounds us. It has become in large part us.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0802127967
• ISBN 13: 9780802127969
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400