On June 29, 1613 during the first on-stage production of Henry VIII, the Globe Theater of Shakespeare fame burned to the ground. Quickly erected and quickly raised, the theater reminds fans of the Elizabethan era that even the best figures from history had their problems.
Shakespeare and his band of thespians known as “The Chamberlain’s Men” performed theater in the round which meant that the audience and the actors had the intimate experience of close proximity. There were no female actors at the time as such a practice was illegal and viewed as obscene. So whether the character was Romeo or Juliet, the actor was male and this was not strange. In fact, the tradition of male actors playing female leads continues today in British pantomime (Christmas Plays) performances.
As theater developed into its modern form, the plays, performances and skills of the various actors and writers were a constant source of conversation. Those who performed best, created the most drama and put on the most captivating stories were rewarded with packed houses and good reviews in the morning papers. For this reason, special effects played a large role in productions and Shakespeare and his company were no exception to this as during his life, he was just another writer trying to improve his credentials.
Without modern safety equipment such as fire extinguishers and smoke alarms and without the close proximity of a municipal fire brigade, devastating structural fires were common during the period. In fact it would be only a few decades later that the Great Fire of London (1666) would take place, raising a vast portion of the capital to the ground.
What historians typically designate as the ancient Greek period are the years between 1000 B.C. and 323 B.C. when Alexander the Great died or through the 3rd century C.E., when the Christian era began. The legacy of Greek civilization was greatly influential to the succeeding Roman Empire and to subsequent western cultures.
The Archaic Period and Classical periods (extending from roughly 750 - 323 BC) in Greece, which commenced after a period of altercation with the Dorian tribes from the north, marked a period of flourishing arts and letters in Greece. It was a period of time that produced such poets and dramatists as Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho arose and which would eventually produce great philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Socrates. It was also during this age that the Greeks developed the most influential political form - the city-state, or polis.
This period in Greek history was not all calm, however. The many city-states that comprised the Greek culture were allies when having to defend themselves from external forces but could also become enemies of one another in their efforts to attain a dominant role among the Greek league of states. It was during this time that the Greeks fought the Peloponnesian War, wherein Athens and Sparta vied for supremacy in the region. The Spartans prevailed but, weakened by the war and an unhappy population, were soon defeated by another Greek population, the Thebans. The Thebans in turn were overcome by the Macedonian, as was the rest of the Greek league, with the rise of Philip II of Macedon and later his son, Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great’s rule and expansionist vision, allowed Athens to reach its greatest political and cultural heights. Achievements during this period include the building of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, the creation of the tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides and the founding of the philosophical schools of Socrates and Plato.
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The period between the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great and the establishment of Roman supremacy is called the Hellenistic Period (336-146 BC) when Greek culture and learning were pre-eminent in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor. The death of Alexander the Great opened the door for unrest among the city-states again and the fragmented Greek territories became vulnerable to the incursions of the Roman Empire. Rome effectively attained dominance over Greek military might by 187 B.C., though Greek culture would prove to be extremely influential over Roman culture and subsequent Western Civilization. | |||||||||||
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The term “Renaissance”, or rebirth, was coined by historians in the mid 19th century to describe the period in Western European history that was characterized by a resurgence of ideas, philosophies, and culture from the classical period. A golden age of cultural, intellectual and ideological movements occurred between roughly the early 14th to the late 16th century in Europe that drew on many elements of classical Greek and Roman history. From the decadence of the Middle Ages and the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church increasingly exerted a dominant influence on European life and became the defacto broker of power in Europe. So it was that within this cultural setting, the dominant ideas of the Renaissance emerged from the collection of city-states in Italy and proliferated throughout Europe via the well connected commercial routes of the time.
Florence, in particular, was emerging as a powerful city-state through its commercial strength as a textile producer and banking center. Its burgeoning economy and growing mercantile class made it a focal point for the cultural transformations that would be associated with the Renaissance. The fall of the Byzantine Empire also fueled change in Western Europe as exiled Greek scholars established themselves in the west, bringing with them copies of classical philosophical texts, literature, and salvaged art works and opening to the Europeans a door to the riches of the classical Greek and Roman periods that had been lost through the centuries of internal tribal warfare and barbaric invasions.
Money from the new middle classes went towards commissioning artists and architects to create masterpieces in quantity and scale unmatched till then. Artists such as Giotto, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Lotto, da Vinci, Michelangelo, to name a few, elevated art to a new level and form of cultural expression. The Renaissance began to flourish in the kingdoms to the north of Florence as well, with new ideas and momentum of change spreading along trade routes. Venetian Italy and the regions of the Netherlands also were transformed by new ideas, aesthetics, and commerce.
Greece is a land of hard limestone mountains and deep valleys cut almost in two by the Corinthian Gulf. To the east the mainland is continued by islands, to the south by the greater island of Crete. Even including the islands, Greece is a small country that has never had more than a few million inhabitants. However, it has always played an important role in the history of Western civilization. Bound by the Ionian and Aegean seas, the Greeks have long been a maritime people, reliant on maritime trade and mobility to prosper. In ancient Greece central control over every district was difficult because areas were separated from one another by mountains or the sea. This largely determined the political make-up of ancient Greece, which was composed of city-states that continually sought to increase their boundaries to accommodate their inhabitants. The isolated nature of the city-states did not stem the flow of ideas, however, particularly aesthetic and philosophical ones, and ancient Greece gave rise to a rich tradition of thought. 
During the Classical period of Greece’s history, Athens reached great heights in politics and culture. This was the period during which Pericles developed his democratic ideas, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripedes wrote their great tragedies and Socrates and Plato set up their great philosophy schools.
With secret societies based around philosophy, politics, Freemasonry and Rosicrucian mysticism all the rage in the early 18th century England, two aristocrats, Philip Wharton, the first Duke of Wharton and George Lee, the Earl of Lichfield, decided to found one dedicated to their own, more sophomoric tastes. 
Needing a headquarters for his new operation, Dashwood leased a 12th century abbey on the Thames and began retrofitting it to his purposes. After tunneling a series of tunnels beneath the site, away from prying eyes, he installed idols of Venus and Dionysus next to murals celebrating pagan mythology and phallic carvings. The Hell Fire Club had been reborn, but needing suitable cover for his society, Dashwood publicly “christened” his order the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe.
