Globe Theatre

Examination of old leases and parish records has identified the plot of land acquired for building The Globe as extending from the west side of modern-day Southwark Bridge Road eastwards as far as Porter Street and from Park Street southwards as far as the back of Gatehouse Square.{{Sfn|Mulryne|Shewring|1997|p=69}}{{sfn|Braines|1924|pp=17–45}} Conveniently within the "entertainment ghetto" already established at Southwark,{{Sfn|Mulryne|Shewring|1997|p=18}} it was being offered for rent by Thomas Brend, who was a neighbour to John Heminges and Henry Condell, actors with the Chamberlain's Men.{{Sfn|Shapiro|2005|page=3}}

The precise location of the building remained unknown until a small part of the foundations, including one original pier base, was discovered in 1989 by the Department of Greater London Archaeology (now Museum of London Archaeology) beneath the car park at the rear of Anchor Terrace on Park Street.{{sfn|Bowsher|Miller|2009|page=87}}{{sfn|Wilson|1993|page=251}}{{sfn|McCudden|1990}} The shape of the foundations is now replicated on the surface. As the majority of the foundations lies beneath 67–70 Anchor Terrace, a listed building, no further excavations have been permitted.{{sfn|Bowsher|Miller|2009|page=4}}

File:Hollar Long View detail.png.{{cite book |year=2006 |editor=Cooper, Tarnya|title=Searching for Shakespeare |publisher=National Portrait Gallery |location=London |isbn=978-0-300-11611-3 |pages=92–93 |chapter=A view from St Mary Overy, Southwark, looking towards Westminster, c. 1638}} Here the correct label has been restored. Tim Fitzpatrick, professor of performance studies at Sydney University, describes how the onion dome (centre) could have covered a roof lantern to admit extra daylight to the inner stage.{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Tim |title=From archaeological remains to onion dome: At the upper limits of speculation |journal=Shakespeare |date=December 2011 |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=432–451 |doi=10.1080/17450918.2011.625445}} The small building to the left supplied food- and ale-sellers at the theatre.{{sfn|Bowsher|Miller|2009|page=112}}}}]]File:Theater bankside.jpg of 1616 showing The Globe (right) and the Bear Garden (left)]]File:London theatres C16—C17, Red Lion.jpg

File:Globe Southwark street plan.png

The Globe was owned by actors who were also shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Two of the six Globe shareholders, Richard Burbage and his brother Cuthbert Burbage, owned double shares of the whole, or 25 per cent each; the other four men, Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and Thomas Pope, owned a single share, or 12.5 per cent. (Originally William Kempe was intended to be the seventh partner, but he sold out his share to the four minority sharers, leaving them with more than the originally planned 10 per cent).{{Sfn|Gurr|1991|pages=45–46}} These initial proportions changed over time as new sharers were added. Shakespeare's share diminished from 1/8 to 1/14 (roughly 7 per cent), over the course of his career.{{Sfn|Schoenbaum|1991|pp=648–649}}

The Globe was built in 1599 using timber from an earlier theatre, The Theatre, which had been built by Richard Burbage's father, James Burbage, in Shoreditch in 1576. The Burbages originally had a 21-year lease of the site on which the theatre was built but owned the building outright. However, the landlord, Giles Allen, claimed that the building had become his with the expiry of the lease. On 28 December 1598, while Allen was celebrating Christmas at his country home, carpenter Peter Street, supported by the players and their friends, dismantled The Theatre beam by beam and transported it to Street's waterfront warehouse near Bridewell.{{Sfn|Shapiro|2005|page=7}} With the onset of more favourable weather in the following spring, the material was ferried over the Thames to reconstruct it as The Globe on some marshy gardens to the south of Maiden Lane, Southwark. While only a hundred yards from the congested shore of the Thames, the piece of land was situated close by an area of farmland and open fields.{{Sfn|Shapiro|2005|pages=122-123, 129}} It was poorly drained and, notwithstanding its distance from the river, was liable to flooding at times of particularly high tide; a "wharf" (bank) of raised earth with timber revetments had to be created to carry the building above the flood level.{{harvnb|ps=.|Bowsher|Miller|2009|page=90}} The new theatre was larger than the building it replaced, with the older timbers being reused as part of the new structure; the Globe was not merely the old Theatre newly set up at Bankside.Allen's court proceedings against Street and the Burbages noted that the timber from The Theatre was "sett up…in an other forme" at Bankside. Quoted in {{harvnb|ps=.|Bowsher|Miller|2009|page=90}}{{Cite book |last=Adams |first=John Cranford |year=1961 |title=The Globe Playhouse. Its design and equipment |edition=2 |publisher=John Constable |location=London |oclc=556737149}} It was probably completed by the summer of 1599, possibly in time for the opening production of Henry V and its famous reference to the performance crammed within a "wooden O".{{Cite book |last1=Bate |first1=Jonathan |author-link1=Jonathan Bate |year=2007 |last2=Rasmussen |first2=Eric |title=William Shakespeare Complete Works |publisher=Macmillan |location=London |isbn=978-0-230-00350-7 |page=1030}} Dover Wilson, however, defers the opening date until September 1599, taking the "wooden O" reference to be disparaging and thus unlikely to be used in the Globe's inaugural staging. He suggests that the account of Thomas Platter, a Swiss tourist, describing a performance of Julius Caesar witnessed on 21 September 1599, tells of the more likely first production.{{cite book |last=Dover Wilson |first=John |author-link=John Dover Wilson |year=1968 |title=The Works of Shakespeare{{snd}}Julius Caesar |series=Cambridge New Shakespeare |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge, England |isbn=0-521-09482-8 |page=ix}} The first performance for which a firm record remains was Jonson's Every Man out of His Humour—with its first scene welcoming the "gracious and kind spectators"—at the end of the year.{{Cite book |last=Stern |first=Tiffany |year=2010 |editor=Sanders, Julie |title=Ben Jonson in Context |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge, England |isbn=978-0-521-89571-2 |page=113 |chapter=The Globe Theatre and the open-air amphitheatres}}

On 29 June 1613, the Globe Theatre went up in flames during a performance of Henry VIII.{{sfn|Nagler|1958|p=8}} A theatrical cannon, set off during the performance, misfired, igniting the wooden beams and thatching. According to one of the few surviving documents of the event, no one was hurt except a man whose burning breeches were put out with a bottle of ale.{{Cite book |last=Wotton |first=Henry |author-link=Henry Wotton |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/lifelettersofsir02smitiala/page/32/mode/2up |title=The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton |date=2 July 1613 |publisher=Clarendon Press |editor=Smith, Logan Pearsall |editor-link=Logan Pearsall Smith |volume=Two |location=Oxford, England |pages=32–33 |chapter=Letters of Wotton}} It was rebuilt in the following year.

Like all the other theatres in London, the Globe was closed down by the outbreak of the First English Civil War, when the Long Parliament closed all London theatres by an ordinance dated 2 September 1642.{{cite book|author1=Jane Milling|author2=Peter Thomson|title=The Cambridge History of British Theatre|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0_cGBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA439|year= 2004|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521650403|pages=439, 459}} It was pulled down in 1644–45 (the commonly cited document dating the act to 15 April 1644 is not reliableThis is no more than a pencil note in the margin of a copy of John Stow's 1598 Survay of London in the library of Thomas Phillipps: see {{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Joseph Quincy |author1-link=Joseph Quincy Adams |title=Shakespearean Playhouses a history of English theatres from the beginnings to the restoration |date=1917 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |location=Boston MA |oclc=1072672737 |page=264}}) to make room for tenements.{{harvnb|ps=.|Mulryne|Shewring|1997|p=75}}

A modern reconstruction of the theatre, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997, with a production of Henry V. It is an academic approximation of the original design, based on available evidence of the 1599 and 1614 buildings,Martin, Douglas. [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD6133DF93BA1575AC0A9659C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/D/Deaths%20(Obituaries) "John Orrell, 68, Historian On New Globe Theater, Dies"], The New York Times, 28 September 2003, accessed 19 December 2012 and is located approximately {{convert|230|m|ft|order=flip}} from the site of the original theatre.

File:Hodge's conjectural Globe reconstruction.jpgFile:Original Globe.jpg

The Globe's detailed dimensions are unknown, but its shape and size can be estimated from scholarly inquiry over the last two centuries.{{harvnb|ps=.|Egan|1999|pp=1–16}} The evidence suggests that it was a three-storey, open-air amphitheatre approximately {{convert|100|ft|m}} in diameter that could house up to 3,000 spectators.{{sfn|Orrell|1989}} The Globe is shown as round on Wenceslas Hollar's sketch of the building, later incorporated into his etched Long View of London from Bankside in 1647. However, in 1988–89 the uncovering of a small part of the Globe's foundation suggested that it was a polygon of 20 sides.Mulryne; Shewring (1997: 37; 44){{harvnb|ps=.|Egan|2004|pp=5.1–22}}

At the base of the stage and surrounding it on three sides, there was an area called the yard, the name deriving from the old inn-yards,{{cite book |last1=Astington |first1=John |editor1-last=Gurr |editor1-first=Andrew |editor2-last=Karim-Cooper |editor2-first=Farah |editor1-link=Andrew Gurr |title=Moving Shakespeare Indoors Performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse |date=2014 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9781139629195 |page=21 |chapter=Why the theatres changed}}Dekker, Thomas (1609), reprinted 1907, {{ISBN|0-7812-7199-1}}. The Gull’s Hornbook: "the stage[…]will bring you to most perfect light[…]though the scarecrows in the yard hoot at you". where, for a penny, people (the "groundlings") would stand on the rush-strewn earthen floor to watch the performance. During the excavation of the Globe in 1989 a layer of nutshells was found, pressed into the dirt flooring so as to form a new surface layer.{{sfn|McCudden|1990}} Vertically around the yard were three levels of more expensive stadium-style seats. A rectangular stage platform thrust out into the middle of the open-air yard. The stage was approximately {{convert|43|ft|m|0}} in width, {{convert|27|ft|m|0}} in depth and was raised about {{convert|5|ft|m|1}} off the ground. On this stage, there was a trapdoor for use by performers to enter from the "cellarage" area beneath the stage.{{sfn|Nagler|1958|pp=23–24}}

The back wall of the stage had two or three doors on the main level, with a curtained inner stage in the centre (although not all scholars agree about the existence of this supposed "inner below"),{{cite book |last=Kuritz |first=Paul |year=1988 |title=The making of theatre history |publisher=Prentice Hall|location=Englewood Cliffs, NJ |isbn=0-13-547861-8 |pages=189–91}} and a balcony above it. The doors entered into the "tiring house"from attiring—dressing: {{cite book |year=1989 |title=Oxford English Dictionary |edition=2 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford, England |chapter=tiring, n.³|title-link=Oxford English Dictionary }} (backstage area) where the actors dressed and awaited their entrances. The floors above may have been used as storage for costumes and props, and management offices.{{sfn|Bowsher|Miller|2009|pages=136–37}} The balcony housed the musicians, and could also be used for scenes requiring an upper space, such as the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Rush matting covered the stage, although this may only have been used if the setting of the play demanded it.

Large columns on either side of the stage supported a roof over the rear portion of the stage. The ceiling under this roof was called the "heavens," and was painted as a sky with clouds.{{Sfn|Mulryne|Shewring|1997|p=139}} A trapdoor in the heavens enabled performers to descend using some form of rope and harness.{{Sfn|Mulryne|Shewring|1997|p=166}} The stage was set in the south-east corner of the building so as to be in shade during afternoon performances in summer.{{Cite book |last=Egan |first=Gabriel |year=2015 |editor=Wells, Stanley |title=The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=210|edition=2|isbn= 9780198708735}}

The name of the Globe supposedly alludes to the Latin tag totus mundus agit histrionem ("all the world plays the player"), in turn derived from quod fere totus mundus exerceat histrionem—"because all the world is a playground"—from Petronius, the satirical Roman author who had wide circulation in England in the Burbages' time. Totus mundus agit histrionem was, according to this explanation, therefore adopted as the theatre's motto.{{Cite book |last1=Ingleby |first1=C. M. |last2=Smith |first2=Lucy Toulmin |author1-link=Clement Mansfield Ingleby |author2-link=Lucy Toulmin Smith |last3=Furnival |first3=Frederick |author-link3=Frederick Furnival |editor=Monro, John |title=The Shakespere allusion-book : a collection of allusions to Shakespere from 1591 to 1700 |publisher=Chatto and Windus |location=London |year=1909|volume=2 |page=373 |oclc=603995070}} It seems likely, however, that the link between the supposed motto from Petronius and the theatre was made only later, originating with the industrious early Shakespeare biographer William Oldys, who claimed as his source a loaned copy of the Harleian Manuscripts to which he once had access. This was repeated in good faith by his literary executor George Steevens, but the tale is now thought "suspicious", with Oldys perpetrating a "hoax on his credulous public".{{cite book |last1=Ingleby |first1=C. M. |last2=Smith |first2=Lucy Toulmin |title=Shakespeare's centurie of prayse |date=1874 |publisher=Trübner & Co |location=London |pages=409–410|oclc= 690802639|edition=2}} The Shakespearean editor Edmond Malone took Oldys's conjecture further, by reporting that the motto was on the theatre's flag of a globe of the Earth on the shoulders of Hercules.{{Cite journal |last=Stern |first=Tiffany |year=1997 |title=Was 'Totus mundus agit histrionem' ever the motto of the Globe Theatre? |journal=Theatre Notebook |publisher=The Society for Theatre Research |volume=51 |issue=3 |page=121 |issn=0040-5523}}{{cite book |last=Egan |first=Gabriel |year=2001 |editor=Dobson, Michael |editor2=Wells, Stanley |editor2-link=Stanley Wells |title=The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00dobs |url-access=limited |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford, England |isbn=978-0-19280614-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00dobs/page/n198 166] |chapter=Globe theatre}}

Another allusion, familiar to the contemporary theatre-goer, would have been to Teatrum Mundi ("Theatre of the World"), a meditation by the twelfth-century philosopher John of Salisbury, in his Policraticus, book three. This included a discourse on theatrical metaphors from the Bible and from many authors from classical antiquity. Reprinted in 1595, it was in wide circulation and much read. Critic Ernst Curtius has described how it was John of Salisbury's commentary, rather than the works of Petronius, that suggested the name.{{cite book |last1=Curtius |first1=Ernst Robert |title=European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages |date=1948|edition=1953|authorlink=Ernst Curtius|translator-last1=Trask|translator-first1=Willard R.|publisher=Princeton University Press |pages=139–140|isbn=0-691-09739-9|quotation=Not from Petronius, as some writers have averred, but from the Policraticus […]}}

There would have been a ready understanding of the classical derivation.{{cite book|last1=Gillies|first1=John|title=Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference|date=1994|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, England|isbn=978-0521417198|page=76}} Shakespeare's complaint in Hamlet (act 2, scene 3) likening the child actors of the Blackfriars Theatre stealing the Globe's custom as "carrying off Hercules […] and his load too" alludes to the metaphor.{{cite journal |last1=Dutton |first1=Richard |editor1-last=Wells |editor1-first=Stanley |editor1-link=Stanley Wells |title=Hamlet, an apology for actors, and the sign of the Globe |journal=Shakespeare Survey |date=1988 |volume=41 |pages=35–37 |publisher=Cambridge University Press}} An elegy on the death of Globe actor Richard Burbage alludes to the god Atlas on the theatre's flag, but in mythology the figures of Atlas and Hercules can be interchangeable, as one of the labours of Hercules was to relieve Atlas of his burden.{{cite book |last1=van den Berg |first1=Kent |title=Playhouse and cosmos : Shakespearean theater as metaphor |date=1985 |publisher=University of Delaware Press |location=Newark |isbn=0-87413-244-4 |page=38}} G. B. Harrison, in his introduction to an edition of As You Like It (Penguin Books, 1953), perceives that Jaques is making reference to the Globe Theatre's motto in his "All the world's a stage" speech (act 2 scene 7).{{cite book |editor1-last=Harrison |editor1-first=George |editor1-link=G. B. Harrison |title=As You Like It |date=1953 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=Harmondsworth, England |oclc= 700383178 |chapter=Introduction|quotation="This is Shakespeare's little essay on the motto of the new Globe Theatre which the company had just occupied." }}

{{Portal|London}}

• Curtain Theatre
• The Rose
• The Theatre

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{cite book|last1=Bowsher|first1=Julian |last2=Miller |first2=Pat |title=The Rose and the Globe – playhouses of Shakespeare's Bankside, Southwark|year=2009|publisher=Museum of London|isbn=978-1-901992-85-4}}
• {{cite book

|title = The Site of the Globe Playhouse, Southwark

|last = Braines

|first = William Westmoreland

|year = 1924

|edition = 2nd

|publisher = Hodder and Stoughton

|location = London

|oclc = 3157657

|ol = 19680911M

|hdl = 2027/uc1.b4507942

}}

• {{cite book |last=Egan |first=Gabriel |title=Shakespeare Survey |year=1999 |chapter=Reconstructions of The Globe: A Retrospective |volume=52 |issue=1 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780521660747/page/1 1–16] |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780521660747/page/1 |isbn=0-521-66074-2 |doi=10.1017/CCOL0521660742.001 |url=https://figshare.com/articles/Reconstructions_of_the_Globe_a_retrospective/9328061 }}
• {{cite journal |last=Egan |first=Gabriel |year=2004 |title=The 1599 Globe and its modern replica: Virtual Reality modelling of the archaeological and pictorial evidence |journal=Early Modern Literary Studies |volume=13 |pages=5.1–22 |url=http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-13/egan/index.htm |issn=1201-2459 |access-date=25 July 2007 }}
• {{cite book|author=Gurr |first=Andrew |author-link=Andrew Gurr |year=1991 |title=The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=0-521-42240-X}}
• {{cite journal

|title = The Discovery of the Globe Theatre

|last = McCudden

|first = Simon

|journal = London Archaeologist

|date = Spring 1990

|volume = 6

|issue = 6

|pages = 143–144

|url = http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-457-1/dissemination/pdf/vol06/vol06_06/06_06_143_144.pdf

}}

• {{cite book |last1=Mulryne |first1=J. R. |last2=Shewring |first2=Margaret |title=Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780521599887 |url-access=registration |year=1997 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-59988-1 }}
• {{cite book |author=Nagler |first=A.M. |year=1958 |title=Shakespeare's Stage |url=https://archive.org/details/shakespearesstag0000nagl |url-access=registration |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven, CT |isbn=0-300-02689-7 }}
• {{cite web |last=Orrell |first=John |author-link=John Orrell |year=1989 |title=Reconstructing Shakespeare's Globe |work=History Trails |publisher=University of Alberta |url=https://www.ualberta.ca/ALUMNI/history/peopleh-o/89sumorrell.htm |access-date=10 December 2007 |archive-date=6 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140306215031/http://www.ualberta.ca/ALUMNI/history/peopleh-o/89sumorrell.htm |url-status=dead }}
• {{cite book|author=Schoenbaum |first=Samuel|author-link=Samuel Schoenbaum|year=1991|title=Shakespeare's Lives|publisher=Clarendon Press|location=Oxford|isbn=0-19-818618-5|url=https://archive.org/details/shakespeareslive00scho_0}}
• {{cite book |last1=Shapiro |first1=James |author1-link=James S. Shapiro |title=1599 : a year in the life of William Shakespeare |date=2005 |publisher=Faber and Faber |location=London |isbn=0-571-21480-0 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Wilson |first1=Ian |author1-link=Ian Wilson (author) |title=Shakespeare: the evidence: unlocking the mysteries of the man and his work |date=1993 |publisher=Headline |location=London |isbn=9780747205821}}

{{refend}}

{{Commons category|Globe Theatre, Southwark}}

• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22397 Shakespearean Playhouses], by Joseph Quincy Adams, Jr. from Project Gutenberg
• [http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/ Shakespeare's Globe] The 1996 reconstruction
• [https://www.sydney.edu.au/dam/corporate/images/news-and-opinion/news/2017/july/Card-model-from-Hollar's-point-of-view.JPG/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.1280.1280.jpeg "A reconstruction of the second Globe"]{{snd}}The structure of the Globe by extrapolation from Hollar's sketch. University of Sydney.
• [http://www.shakespearestudyguide.com/Globe.html#Globe Comprehensive Guide to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre]

{{Shakespeare|state=collapsed}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:1599 establishments in England

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Category:1642 disestablishments

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Category:17th-century disestablishments in England

Category:Archaeological sites in London

Category:Brend family

Category:Burned buildings and structures in the United Kingdom

Category:Burned theatres

Category:Demolished theatres in London

Category:Former buildings and structures in the London Borough of Southwark

Category:Former theatres in London

Category:Outdoor theatres

Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1599

Category:Theatres completed in the 16th century

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Category:William Shakespeare