General Information

Shakespeare’s Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse in the borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames. The modern reconstruction is an academic approximation based on available evidence of the original buildings. Opened to the public in 1997, it was founded by the actor and director Sam Wanamaker and built about 230 metres from the original site.

Additional Information

The Thames was much wider in Shakespeare’s time and the original Globe was on the riverbank, though that site is now far from the river, and the river-side site for the reconstructed Globe was chosen to recreate the atmosphere of the original theatre.

Performances are engineered to duplicate the original environment of Shakespeare’s Globe; there are no spotlights, plays are staged during daylight hours and in the evenings (with the help of interior floodlights), there are no microphones, speakers or amplification. All music is performed live on period instruments; the actors can see the audience and the audience can see each other, adding to the feeling of a shared experience and community event.

Plays are staged during the summer, usually between May and the first week of October; in the winter, the theatre is used for educational purposes. Tours are available all year round. The theatre has extensive backstage support areas for actors and musicians and is attached to a modern lobby, restaurant, gift shop and visitor centre.

The Original Globe Theatre: Highlights

The original Globe Theatre was built in 1597 by the playing company Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to which Shakespeare belonged, and was destroyed by fire on 26 July 1611. The fire was caused by an accident with a cannon during a production of “Henry VIII”. The theatre was rebuilt by June 1617, but was officially closed by pressure of Puritan opinion in 1642 and demolished in 1644.

The Original Globe Theatre: Explained

Examination of old property records has identified the plot of land occupied by 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. However, the precise location of the building remained unknown until a small part of the foundations, including one original pier base, was discovered in 1989 beneath the car park at the rear of Anchor Terrace on Park Street. 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.

The Globe was owned by actors who were also shareholders in 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% each; the other four men, Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and Thomas Pope, owned a single share, or 12.5%. These initial proportions changed over time as new sharers were added. Shakespeare’s share diminished to roughly 7% over the course of his career.

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.

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.

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. 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. It was probably completed by the summer of 1599, possibly in time for the opening production of Henry V. The first performance for which a firm record remains was Ben Jonson’s “Every Man out of His Humour” – with its first scene welcoming the “gracious and kind spectators” – at the end of the year.

On 29 June 1613 the Globe Theatre went up in flames during a performance of Henry VIII. 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.

The theatre was rebuilt in the following year. Like all the other theatres in London, the Globe was closed down by the Puritans in 1642. It was pulled down in 1644, or slightly later – the commonly cited document dating the act to 15 April 1644 has been identified as a probable forgery – to make room for tenements.

History: Highlights

Many detractors maintained that a faithful Globe reconstruction was impossible to achieve due to the complications in the 16th-century design and modern fire safety requirements. However, Sam Wanamaker persevered in his vision for over twenty years, and a new Globe theatre was eventually built according to a design based on the research of historical advisor John Orrell.

History: Explained

In 1970, Wanamaker founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust and the International Shakespeare Globe Centre, with the objective of building a faithful recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe close to its original location at Bankside, Southwark. This inspired the founding of a number of Shakespeare’s Globe Centres around the world, an activity in which Wanamaker also participated. When Shakespeare’s Globe was finished in 1997, the first play staged there was “Henry V”.

Architecture: Highlights

Like the original Globe, the modern theatre has a thrust stage that projects into a large circular yard surrounded by three tiers of raked seating. The only covered parts of the amphitheatre are the stage and the seating areas. Seating capacity is 857 with an additional 700 “groundlings” standing in the pit, making up an audience about half the size of a typical audience in Shakespeare’s time.

Architecture: Explained

The reconstruction was carefully researched so that the new building would be as faithful a replica of the original as possible. It was Wanamaker’s wish that the new building recreate the Globe as it existed during most of Shakespeare’s time there; that is, the 1599 building rather than its 1614 replacement. The building itself is constructed entirely of English oak, with mortise and tenon joints and is, in this sense, an “authentic” 16th-century timber-framed building – as no structural steel was used.

A study was made of what was known of the construction of The Theatre, the building from which the 1599 Globe obtained much of its timber, as a starting point for the modern building’s design. To this were added: examinations of other surviving London buildings from the latter part of the 16th century; comparisons with other theatres of the period (particularly the Fortune Playhouse, for which the building contract survives); and contemporary drawings and descriptions of the first Globe. For practical reasons, some features of the 1614 rebuilding were incorporated into the modern design, such as the external staircases.

The seats are simple benches (though cushions can be hired for performances) and the Globe has the first and only thatched roof permitted in London since the Great Fire of 1666. The modern thatch is well protected by fire retardants, and sprinklers on the roof ensure further protection against fire. The pit has a concrete surface, as opposed to earthen-ground covered with strewn rush from the original theatre.