Globe Theatre, where it all started in 1599 at Bankside on
the South side of London.
The theatre was built for the Chamberlain's Men William
Shakespeare's company of actors & players. Here, Shakespeare
worked and wrote many of his greatest plays.
In 1644, the Globe was destroyed. London had to wait 350
years until Sam Wanamaker brought it back to life.
Address
Shakespeare's Globe
21 New Globe Walk
Bankside
London SE1 9DT
General Enquiries
Telephone : +44 (0)20 7902 1400
Fax : +44 (0)20 7902 1401
Email enquiries : info@shakespearesglobe.com
Web address : www.shakespeares-globe.org
Box Office
Telephone : +44 (0)20 7401 9919
Fax : +44 (0)20 7902 1475
Minicom : +44 (0)20 7902 1476
(For customers with hearing impairments.)
Key Dates
1564 - William Shakespeare Born
1599 - First Globe Playhouse built
- 21 September, first recorded performance of a play at the
Globe (Julius Caesar)
1613 - Globe burns down and is rebuilt immediately
on original foundations
1616 - Shakespeare dies
1642 - All London theatres closed by parliament
amid rising public disorder
1644 - Globe destroyed and its foundations
buried
1949 - Sam Wanamaker comes to London and
looks for the site of the Globe Theatre
1970 - Sam Wanamaker establishes Globe Playhouse
Trust with central objective of raising funds to rebuild the
Globe.
- Southwark Council offers the Trust current 1.2 acre site
beside the River Thames, opposite St. Paul's Cathedral, approximately
200 yards from the site of the original Globe.
1972 - Bear Gardens Museum opens offering
a permanent exhibition on 16th and 17th century theatre history,
lectures and workshops.
1987 - Site is cleared, ready for ground
breaking ceremony in July.
1988 - Diaphragm all constructed to protect
site from the river Thames.
1989 - Six metre deep foundations are created
1992 - Two trial bays of new Globe Theatre
built and formally unveiled by HRH Prince Edward in June.
- Concrete columns are raised and Piazza laid
1993 - Construction of Globe Theatre begins
on Piazza
- 18 December, Sam Wanamaker CBE dies
1994 - Summer, construction of Globe Theatre
wall begins; largest lime plastering project in UK
- Summer, thatching of the theatre begins, first thatched
building in central London since the Great Fire of 1666
- Bear Gardens Museum replaced by Globe Education Centre
- New exhibition opens on the site of the Globe reconstruction
in August
- 12 September, Theo Crosby, Globe Architect, dies
1995 - August to 10 September, Workshop
Season in substantially completed theatre
- National Lottery funding of £12.4 million granted
to Trust to fund completion of Globe, foyer areas and ancillary
facilities.
1996 - New exhibition opens in shell of
Inigo Jones Theatre in June
- 21 August to 15 September, Prologue Season, The Two
Gentlemen of Verona
1997 - 27 May to 21 September, Opening Season:
Shakespeare's Henry V and The Winter's
Tale , Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
and Beaumont & Flectcher's The Maid's Tragedy .
- 8 to 23 June, Festival of Firsts opening festival
- 12 June, HM the Queen and HRH Prince Philip, Patron of the
Shakespeare Globe Trust, celebrate the spring opening.
Frequently Asked Questions :
What are the differences between the Globe in Shakespeare's
day and the present Globe ?
Mostly the differences are caused by reasons of safety. There
are four entrances instead of two, there are exit signs and
fire sprinklers; otherwise it is as much like Shakespeare's
Globe as possible.
How do you know what the first Globe was like ?
We have information from letters written by people who actually
went to the playhouse, from the plays themselves and from
picture maps. All that information was checked by looking
at what was found when the site of the Rose playhouse and
a bit of the first Globe which was dug up.
Did Queen Elizabeth I go to the Globe ?
No. The actors would give a special performance of the same
play at one of the Royal Palaces.
Did people really throw tomatoes at the actors ?
Tomatoes were not known in England at that time. People went
to the playhouse especially to hear and see the play, not
to spoil their enjoyment. At the end of the performance the
actors would announce the next day's play, and if it was unpopular
people might throw things and shout that this was a bad choice.
Why were there no actresses ?
The short answer is tradition. Plays throughout Europe had
been performed by all-male casts in the Middle Ages, probably
because they were closely connected with the male-dominated
church; while all other European countries allowed women on
stage by Shakespeare's time, in England this change did not
occur until the 1660s. Female roles in Shakespeare's day were
played by teenage boys who were apprenticed to an adult member
of the company. (Teenagers developed later in those days,
and their voices may not have broken until they were 17 or
18.)
Do you only do Shakespeare's plays in the Globe today
?
No. Shakespeare is most popular because he writes such wonderful
dramatic verse that there is always something new to excite
an audience. But we do plays by other writers, especially
if they were written for the Globe.
What happens if it rains ?
The people who have seats in the galleries have a roof over
their heads and so do the actors. Groundlings who stand in
the yard usually come prepared to pull up their hoods in the
wet. They seem to enjoy the play just as much as when the
weather is hot.
Why is there no roof ?
The London theatre industry of the late sixteenth- century
flourished in purpose-built open-air amphitheatres, the first
such venues to be erected since the departure of the Romans
1000 years earlier. Their antecedent was not the Greek amphitheatre,
which had a shallow bowl shape and one tier of seating sweeping
upwards, but the Roman amphitheatre as exemplified in the
Colosseum, which stacked one deck of galleries on top of another.
James Burbage named his playhouse of 1576 the Theatre to make
explicit its dependence on the classical model, as its round
shape and stacked galleries implied. Foreign visitors got
the point and repeatedly referred to the London theatres looking
like Roman amphitheatres. We want to experiment with the ways
the plays worked in daylight without a roof just as they did
in Shakespeare's day.
Did they have costume and scenery in the first Globe
?
Costume was very important. Audiences needed to know what
sort of person a character was, so the tiring house at the
back of the stage held many fine and expensive costumes for
characters such as Kings and Queens, roman soldiers, ghosts
or clowns; (Tiring means attiring or dressing). The stage
could be hung with painted cloths, and pieces of scenery like
beds, thrones or tents could be brought on, lowered from above
or pushed up through a trap-door in the stage floor. The whole
playhouse was brilliantly painted, especially the 'heavens'
above the stage which was decorated with sun, moon and stars.
What about sound and music ?
There are a great many sound cues in the plays. Musicians
either perform in the balcony above the stage or on the stage
itself. There are also sounds such as bells, thunder and sea
storms, crowds off-stage, trumpet-calls and even gun-fire.
All these are made 'live' in various parts of the tiring house.
It was a piece of wadding fired from a cannon used to create
a sound effect that set the first Globe on fire. We are more
careful now but we still do not use recorded sound.
Is it difficult for an actor to be heard ?
There was probably a great deal of outside noise in the sixteenth
century from the boats on the river and from iron shot horses
and the wheels of carts. There are different problems today.
We have planes as well as boats on the river and building
work outside. Voices carry very well inside the Globe when
it is full of people and actors simply have to experiment
with how to speak directly to the various part of the playhouse.
No member of the audience is very far from the stage even
though it holds about fifteen hundred people.
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