An Excellent Performance
On a visit to England in 1599, Swiss doctor Thomas Platter found time to pop across the Thames and take in a show.
1599
On a visit to England in 1599, Swiss doctor Thomas Platter found time to pop across the Thames and take in a show.
1599
In 1599, Swiss physician Thomas Platter and his older half-brother, Felix, paid a visit to England, then ruled by Elizabeth I. Two o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday September 21st found Thomas at a theatre ‘across the water’ in Southwark. He may have attended the fading Rose; but most scholars assume he crowded into the brand new Globe to watch one of Mr Shakespeare’s much-admired plays.
ON September 21st after lunch, about two o’clock, I and my party crossed the water, and there in the house with the thatched roof witnessed an excellent performance of the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius Caesar with a cast of some fifteen people; when the play was over, they danced very marvellously and gracefully together as is their wont, two dressed as men and two as women.
The playhouses are so constructed that they play on a raised platform, so that everyone has a good view. There are different galleries and places, however, where the seating is better and more comfortable and therefore more expensive.