Greenwich Field Trip (12/7/12)

16^th Century Greenwich:

In Shakespeare’s time, Greenwich was one of the principle residences of Queen Elizabeth I. Greenwich was home to the Palace of Placentia, Elizabeth’s birthplace and her favorite summer residence. This palace was demolished in the seventeenth century. Greenwich Hospital was built on its site and is now the site of The Old Royal Naval College. Greenwich was also a center of maritime activity. Its placement on the Thames meant that naval defense was necessarily located there to protect London from attacks by river. Many navy ships were being built here so that the naval presence became increasingly intimidating to potential enemies. Allegedly, Shakespeare rehearsed many of his plays in this area.

My Experience:

It was a gorgeous sunny day for exploring the delights of the Royal Borough of Greenwich. With my class, I visited the special exhibit “Royal River: Power, Pageantry, and the Thames” at the National Maritime Museum. The picture below shows Laura, Kelsey, me, and Sarah outside the museum:

I liked that the artifacts were arranged chronologically and were sectioned off into the century of their origin. There were several beautiful items from Shakespeare’s England, such as those that honored Queen Elizabeth I. Many of the items hailed from royal events with processions on the river, such as the Lord Mayor’s procession, coronations, funerals, and royal receptions.  In Shakespeare’s time, the newly elected Lord Mayor and several large and elaborate livery company barges would have preceded down the Thames River every year. The first item of interest at the start of the exhibit depicted this scene of the Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day in the eighteenth century. In this painting, richly colored and luxuriously decorated barges serenely pass the city of London. This artwork reveals the prosperity of the livery companies. Tudor history fascinates me, so Anne Boelyn’s items were of special interest to me. Her prayer book was vividly colorful and exquisitely decorated. I also thought the display concerning ‘the Great Stink’ was interesting and humorous. Some of the paintings from the time showed well-dressed men and women holding their nose in disgust.

My friends and I walked over to the petite Greenwich market to explore its goods and purchase a cheap lunch. Though the market was small, it had quite a lot of unique vintage and antique items for sale. I was tempted to buy some cat-eye 1950s eyeglasses. There were stands for different cultural foods. I passed Ethiopian, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Indian, and vegan food stands.

After I ate some delicious Japanese food, Anne Marie, Leslie, Rob, and I returned to the National Maritime Museum for further exploration. We visited the Traders: the East India Company and Asia exhibit. We choose this exhibit because we thought it would have some relevancy to Shakespeare because of the East India Company’s rich history during his lifetime. Queen Elizabeth I gave the East India Company its royal charter in 1600, at which point it was officially known as Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies. This charter granted the merchants a monopoly on all English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. It was formed to send ships to Indonesia and India to buy pepper and other spices to sell on the London market. At the exhibit, there were samples of each of the different kinds of spices that they traded. The spices were displayed so that you could smell them and discover what they were used for in that time period. Clove, for example, was used for toothaches. There were also samples of the different types of cloth that were traded in later periods of history. We were able to feel the difference in texture between silk, muslin, and linen. The interactive nature of this exhibit made it a lot of more fun and helped me to remember what I learned.