A Renaissance night

Wednesday night was beautiful in London, freezing cold, but dry and crisp. The city glittered.

Kathryn and I crossed the Thames by the Millennium Bridge on our way to the inaugural Theatre History Seminar at Shakespeare's Globe .

Actually, although the lecture was given at the Globe, the drinks and opening speeches of welcome took place in a strange cavern underneath an office block.

This huge basement, just round the corner from the Globe, holds the excavation of the Rose Theatre.

While builders were preparing the foundations for the office block in 1989, the remains of the Rose were discovered. A campaign to preserve them was launched. The office block could not be stopped, but it was agreed that the remains would be available to select groups.

It's a very atmospheric place, a huge dark room with neon lines outlining the very space where Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine, and the Jew of Malta was first performed.

FYI, Shakespeare's Chamberlain's Men performed at the Globe (Shakespeare played Hamlet's Father's Ghost), while the Admiral's Men performed Christopher Marlowe's plays at the Rose.

Theatre: Rose
Company: Admiral's Men
Playwright: Marlowe
Main Actor: Alleyn

Theatre: Globe
Company: Chamberlain's Men
Playwright: Shakespeare
Main Actor: Burbage

Back in the Globe's lecture hall, the speaker took us through her ongoing research on all the 'lost' plays referred to in Philip Henslowe's managment records of the Rose.

After the seminar I

• walked Kathryn and Fiona to London Bridge tube,
• stopped off in a pub to catch the end of the Chelsea Champion's League game,
• went out with the visiting US Renaissance scholars and the Globe Education team,
• walked my friend Farah (the Globe Education lecturer) back to her train at Waterloo,
• crossed the Thames again by the gorgeous Hungerford bridge to catch my tube from Embankment

An invigorating evening.