Twitter

You can’t fly to London right now, but one theater is offering a trip that’s much cheaper and quicker than a transcontinental flight: Shakespeare’s Globe Theater is making its famous productions free to watch online. After closing its doors due to the coronavirus outbreak, The Globe is dropping the paywall to stream some of its productions through the theater’s on-demand streaming service starting April 6. The selection begins with Hamlet and is set to feature Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The selection will change every two weeks and is full of global performances from the 2012 series “Globe to Globe.” While the first show is an English version of Hamlet, viewers will also be able to access a Korean A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a Macedonian Henry VI Part 3, a Polish Macbeth and a Hebrew The Merchant of Venice. If you’re looking for a particular Shakespeare play, Globe Player, the Globe’s on-demand service, has the whole line-up of performances from “Globe to Globe.”
In a specially-curated selection, “Shakespeare in Love & Isolation,” the Globe is offering free content of artists sharing their own Shakespeare recitations from their homes. Fans of Great British Bake Off are sure to recognize a familiar face as part of the “Shakespeare in Love & Isolation” collection — host Sandy Toksvig is set to join in the series with her sister. To celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday April 23, Mark Rylance will adapt his “Shakespeare’s Walks” tradition to make it digitally accessible.

The Globe asked for donations from the public when it had to close since it functions as a charity, and reported that a third of ticket holders chose to donate the price of their tickets from canceled performances to help benefit the theater and support it during the closure.

“In 1599, when Hamlet stood on a ‘distracted Globe’ and uttered the words: Now I am alone – he would have been surrounded by up to 3,000 people. Now we are alone, but we are also in the company of billions, from all around the globe, finding the most inspiring ways to be alone, together,” said Globe Artistic Director Michelle Terry, according to the Evening Standard. “In these times of isolation, we will continue to reach people on our ‘distracted Globe’, providing community, joy, and wonder, remaining, albeit digitally for now, a place of connection for us all.”
The list of English-language plays The Globe is streaming for free includes:

Hamlet (2018), April 6-19
Romeo & Juliet (2009), April 20-May 3
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), May 4-17
The Winter’s Tale (2018), May 18-31
The Two Noble Kinsmen (2018), June 1-14
The Merry Wives of Windsor (2019), June 15-28