I’m in London right now. First time I’ve ever been. I’m leaving tomorrow, but I need to tell y’all abt something.
Everyone knows Shakespeare’s Globe. The Globe theatre. Everyone knows it, because it’s Shakespeare’s theatre. If you know Shakespeare, you probably know Marlowe, his rival. Marlowe’s theatre was the Rose. It was also one of the first theatres in London, closely followed by the globe and the swan.
Today I went on a tour of the Globe (super cool!) and I was walking around nearby when I found a tiny building labeled “The Rose Theatre.” I was a little surprised by how small and hole-in-the-Wall the building was, but I walked in expecting a theatre similar to the Globe.
Y’all. Believe me when I tell you that there is nothing there. When you walk in there is a little reception room and some tables. Behind the door on the far side of the room is a little area with some seats, a cleared space for presenters, and a fence on one edge.
It’s pretty dark. It’s hard to tell what it is, but they’re showing a little movie about it, and the little dark area beyond the fence? It’s water. Underneath the water is the remains of the Rose. Just the fucking outline of the buiding and the stage.
There were four people working there, all elderly women, all volunteers. They don’t have heating or running water. It’s not even fully excavated, there’s a fucking building covering a third of the goddamn theatre.
In the 80s when it was first discovered that the Rose was there, there was a big thing about how the remains should be excavated. Famous actors and lots of people put their support behind it, and then the money ran out. And people stopped caring. Turns out, the reason the remains were relatively well preserved were because the water from the Thames kept it. When they pumped the water out, the site dried out and became unstable. They had to stop.
And now what remains of the Rose theatre lies half excavated and flooded in a dinky little building less than five minutes from the glory of Shakespeare’s Globe.
No one goes in there. Hardly anyone knows about it. They can’t even bring schools in for field trips because of their conditions (running water and heating). All they want is to fully excavate the remains, rebuild it if they can. Make sure people know that it’s there.
And it makes me so sad, and so frustrated. This is the theatre where all of Marlowe’s plays were performed, where Titus Andronicus made its debut. No one even knows it’s there. Shakespeare’s Globe is famous, it’s been rebuilt three times, but Shakespeare’s rival’s theatre sits flooded to keep it from crumbling. It’s ironic and sad.
It’s government owned land, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stay open to the public.
It’s not the Rose theatre in kingston. That’s a modern theatre. The people at the actual site want to preserve the remains of the theatre, rebuild and have a functioning playhouse. But that won’t even be able to happen if nobody knows it’s there.
Please go there, see their place, donate a little.
amandla
titsay
prguitarman
vaporwave
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
