The Globe Theatre

Designed and timber built with a traditional thatch roof in 1576 north of the River Thames on Shoreditch in Finsbury Fields by James Burbage, a leading actor and company manager who was also a highly trained carpenter. It took around six months to construct.

Later difficulties with the lease of the land, saw The Theatre dismantled in 1598, and rebuilt as The Globe on the south side of the Thames .

The thatch of the roof caught fire in 1613 during a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIIl when the smouldering wadding from a cannon was caught in it and the theatre burned to the ground. It was rebuilt again on the old foundations, but the architects learned wisely from their past mistakes and this time they roofed the theatre with slates.

Following the expiration of Burbage's lease in 1599, the timber from his playhouse was sold, transported to the south side of the Thames, and used in the building of the Globe theatre. This was the theatre in which Shakespeare wrote, acted and had a financial investment. It has recently been rebuilt and is once again being used to put on productions in the original styles.

We have gleaned much of the information we have about Elizabethan playhouses from drawings and from the plays themselves. There were three tiers of galleries and a thrust stage which jutted into the centre of the arena. The galleries were roofed and it was here that the wealthy patrons could sit in some comfort and see clearly over the heads of the common folk who stood on the ground around the three corners of the thrust stage which was approximately 40 feet wide, 20-25 feet in depth and four or five feet high to afford a clear view. Unlike the patrons in the gallery who had the shelter of tier roofs, those standing in the pit (often called "groundlings" were exposed to the elements. There were no lights, so the sun would have the only source of illumination for the stage, thus performances were held at three o'clock in the afternoon, while there was still light.

The stage itself was covered by a canopy roof which projected from the back of the platform and was supported at the front by two posts. There were two doors on either side at the rear of the stage, through which the actors made their entrances. Above these doors was a gallery, which was used for `balcony' scenes. It is from this balcony that Juliet would have spoken to Romeo in one of Shakespeare's most famous scenes. Above this was another gallery and it is here that the musicians played. At the rear, also, was an alcove concealed by a curtain which could be pulled back. This was used to create the intimacy required for `discovery' scenes. Behind each of the two doors was a dressing room for the actors And in the cellar space beneath the stage sound effects were created. There would have been little or no scenery so scene changes could be accomplished with great speed. Again unlike today's shows, there would not have been an interval during a play. The production would have been very fluid, with characters entering and exiting in a rapid interchange, and it would have been necessary for the actors to establish the scene through the text rather than the set builders drawing the scene for the audience as companies are wont to do today. Thus at the opening of act I scene 6 of Macbeth, Duncan and Banquo enter Macbeth's castle with the words

This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses.

Some would have us believe that the lack of background scenery was a blessing in disguise, allowing the concentration of attention on the beautiful use of language, however it seems just as plausible to expect that the language developed so beautifully because it was expected to fill in for graphic representations that we are so used to today. Take away the background paintings and stage properties and the audience must use its imagination to conjure up a picture of the scene, and the only way to help the audience to do this would be to create florid and elaborate language. In the nineteenth century, production design became over-elaborate and productions became more reliant on the skill of the scene-painter than on the art of the dramatist. This is a state which has continued to the present with many modern productions relying quite heavily on the art of the scenic designer. This is the very reason why such great modern playwrights as W. B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett, hearkening back to the Elizabethan dramatists methods reduced the amount of clutter on stage in order to focus the audience's attention on the actors' speech.

The principle difference in the composition of the performance company from its' modern counterpart was the lack of female performers. Women were not allowed to take part in plays, and all of the actors of the Elizabethan era were men or boys. Usually the part of a young woman, such as Miranda in the Tempest or Juliet in Romeo and Juliet was played by a boy. This meant that one of the most popular devices of the time became far more plausible than we might find today In The Merchant of Venice,for example, Portia and her serving maid Nerissa impersonate male lawyers to defend the merchant Antonio in his legal battle with Shylock. Having a man playing the part made it simple to accept, but also gave a somewhat preposterous and confusing element to the proceedings which was the principle comedic element of the text. It may be argued that in the modern climate this element of the original text has been lost.

But of course we still find echoes of this device in modern pantomime, in which most of the principle characters are played by the opposite sex, so the dame is traditionally a man, and the principle boy a young woman. When one makes these comparisons, it begs the question that maybe we are taking the drama of Shakespeare far too seriously, and are loosing the fun and entertainment from the plays at the expense of a pretension to high art.