This time last week I was standing amongst the groundlings in Shakespeare’s Globe in London. It is one of the great playhouses of the world and it draws me, without fail, each year. The Globe is as authentic a reconstruction of the Elizabethan playhouse of the same name as can be made in modern times (1). This three-storey structure, built of timber and thatch truly is a "wooden O". Inside the stage building projects into the open space and, on account of this design, the audience – especially those who stand on the ground, hence, groundlings – enjoy a deeper level of intimacy of relationship than in any proscenum arch theatre.
My summer vacation would not be complete without attending a performance at The Globe of a play by the ‘great bard’. Except that the play I was watching this time was not by William Shakespeare, but a contemporary American writer. The playwright was Eric Schlosser, author of best-sellers Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness (2). Like the bard, however, he wrote a ‘history play’.
We The People dramatized the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia during four months of the summer of 1787. This might seem like a dull subject for a three-hour-ten-minute play – especially to an audience of 700 standing, paying members of the public. But the marketing blurb from The Globe actually made it sound quite exciting:
1787. A long, humid Philadelphia summer. The government of the United States of America is on the verge of collapse.
We The People forges a vivid drama from the events surrounding one of the most significant moments in world history. The leading citizens of a recently independent United States of America, menaced by the powers of old Europe and reeling from internal rebellion, gather together to save the Union. Founding fathers Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and George Washington are forced to argue out the fundamental principles of their new nation and establish the foundations of the constitution, which the United States still lives within today (3).
I confess I should have known the story since I have been to Philadelphia and visited Independence Hall, formerly the Pennsylvania State House, just a few years ago (4). I had listened to the National Parks Service guide tell the story moving amongst the tables covered with green felt cloths, but clearly I had not grasped its full significance. Eric Schlosser can feel pleased that this member of the audience finally got it.
The resolution calling the Convention specified its purpose was to propose amendments to the Articles, but the Convention decided to propose a rewritten Constitution (4).
Unlike the citizens of 1787 America for whom the deliberations of the convention were secret, the modern audience of We The People were treated to a fascinating exposé of the arguments of representatives who took part. It was fascinating to watch and contrast Ben Franklin, George Washington and the other members of the group that had anguished over the issue of independence in the 1770s and the resulting Declaration; with the younger upstarts James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Edmund Randolph, who came prepared with their visions of a new America.
The result was the drafting of a new fundamental government design. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was completed, and took effect on March 4, 1789, when the new Congress met for the first time in New York's Federal Hall (4).
Too often these men, known collectively to Americans as ‘The Founding Fathers’ are pertrayed as demi-gods, great men for sure, but distant, not like you and me. The men portrayed by Schlosser, drawing on original source material, were believable, human characters with foibles, fears and humour. As Gore Vidal relays in Inventing a Nation, Washington did not even want to attend the meeting in Philadelphia, having already given a promise to join former officers who had served under him during the War of Independence, called the Society of the Cincinnati (after the Roman dictator Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (5)). Yet he understood the cost of failure, and attended. Schlosser’s Washington, played by John Stahl, convincingly showed this episode in the great man’s life.
What impresses me about the story of the creation of the Republic of the United States of America was the degree to which, in creating the vision of their country, the authors of the Constitution had studied the Classical writers – Polybius, Cicero, Livy and others – to identify the best practices of the ancient Roman Republic – and the pitfalls to avoid in creating one in the New World. The work of The Founding Fathers, as a composition of compromises, was, for the most part well done (the omission of the abolition of slavery was shameful). It has endured these last two hundred and more years and, with subsequent Amendments and The Bill of Rights, the Constitution has served its citizens well.
We The People plays for just fourteen performances at Shakespeare’s Globe until October 6. Don’t miss it.
References
Gore Vidal, Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Yale University Press, 2003
- http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schlosser
- http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/wethepeople/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Convention
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Hall_(United_States)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus
