Shakespeare's Globe
The Globe Theatre, built on the south bank of the Thames in London in 1599, became the most famous playhouse of the English Renaissance. It was the home of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company for which William Shakespeare wrote, acted and held a share in the profits. Many of his greatest plays were staged there, and the building has become a lasting symbol of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater.
The Globe grew out of a dispute. London's first permanent playhouse, simply called The Theatre, had been built in Shoreditch in 1576 by James Burbage, father of the company's leading actor Richard Burbage. When the lease on the land ran into difficulty, the company dismantled the timber frame, according to the usual account in the winter of 1598-99, and carried it across the river to Southwark. There it was reassembled as a new building. Ownership was shared among several members of the company, Shakespeare among them, which was unusual and gave the actors a direct financial stake in their own success.
The Globe was a large, open-air, roughly circular or polygonal building with galleries around a central yard. Audiences paid different prices depending on where they wished to be. Those standing in the yard paid the least, while those seated in the galleries paid more. A raised stage projected into the yard, so the actors were surrounded on several sides, and performances took place in daylight. Scholars debate many details of the original design, including its exact shape and dimensions, because no complete plans survive. Plays associated with the Globe in its early years probably include Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, though dating individual performances is often uncertain.
The first Globe did not last. In 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a cannon fired for effect is generally reported to have ignited the thatched roof, and the building burned down. It was rebuilt with a tile roof and reopened the following year. Theaters were closed by Parliament in 1642 at the outbreak of the English Civil War, and the second Globe was pulled down a couple of years later, in 1644 by most accounts.
The site was largely forgotten until the twentieth century, when archaeological work and the efforts of the American actor and director Sam Wanamaker led to a reconstruction. Shakespeare's Globe, built a short distance from the original location, opened in 1997 using traditional methods and materials. It stages plays much as they might have been seen in Shakespeare's day, and it remains a major attraction that keeps the experience of early modern theater alive for modern audiences.