Dispatch from the Past: Shakespearean Time Travel

I’m a little delayed sending this out, because of some recent travels, but hopefully it’s not too late to join the Hamnet frenzy. In Hand’s interest in Shakespeare extends beyond the page and screen to physical places and spaces that whisk you back into the Elizabethan past. To a time of dripping candles and bark cloth and timber framing. I devoured the book years ago when it came out, and the film—equally absorbing, heart-wrenching, visually stunning—brings to mind a few thatched-roof, Shakespeare-aligned destinations for time travel. If you have plans to be in England this summer, there are all manner of fun, timely Hamnet-adjacent programming one-offs—hie thee hither!

THE GLOBE THEATRE, London

No trip to London is complete without a visit to one of the most storied, open-air theaters of all time. Atmospheric doesn’t do it justice. The original 1599 version to the ground after a cannon was shot during Henry VIII and caught the thatched roof. It was rebuilt a year later, then demolished in 1642 by the Puritans. But it took until 1997 to build again (*near* the original site), with every detail obsessively scrutinized for historical accuracy and with authentic Elizabethan techniques, from green oak timbers, lime plaster walls, shimmering gold leaf paintings across the heavens, and a (fire-proof) thatched roof. When you’re standing in the yard, you can imagine what it would have been like down there with the groundlings—open sky, dirt floor and bodies pressed together in a sea of rise-and-fall emotion, spit flying from the stage. When I was there, it was a busy time, and tickets for live performances were sold out, but make plans ahead of time to experience the thrill of seeing a Shakespeare play under the stars (A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens in April).