Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre opened in 1599 on a patch of marshy ground south of Maiden Lane in Southwark, and for the next fourteen years it was the home of William Shakespeare and the company he shared ownership with. How did a building made by dismantling another theatre, beam by beam, in the dead of winter become the stage on which some of the most enduring works in the English language were first performed? And what actually happened the afternoon a theatrical cannon burned it to the ground? Those questions are worth sitting with, because the Globe's story is stranger and more precarious than its reputation suggests.
On the 28th of December 1598, while their landlord Giles Allen was away at his country home for Christmas, carpenter Peter Street arrived at a theatre in Shoreditch with a crew of players and their allies. The building they had come to dismantle, called The Theatre, had been put up in 1576 by James Burbage, father of the actor Richard Burbage. The lease on the land had expired, and Allen claimed the structure itself now belonged to him. Rather than surrender it, the Burbages and their associates took it apart timber by timber and carted it to a waterfront warehouse near Bridewell.
When the weather turned warmer, those salvaged beams were ferried across the Thames to Southwark. The land chosen was close to farmland and open fields, only about a hundred yards from the congested south bank of the river. It was poorly drained and liable to flooding at particularly high tides, so a raised earthen bank with timber revetments had to be built just to keep the structure above the waterline. The total cost of construction was £700, and the new theatre was deliberately larger than the one it replaced. The Globe was not simply The Theatre relocated; the older timbers were incorporated into a genuinely new structure.
Richard Burbage and his brother Cuthbert together held half the Globe outright, each owning 25 per cent of the whole. The remaining half was divided among four other men: Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and Thomas Pope, each holding a 12.5 per cent share. William Kempe had originally been intended as a seventh partner, but he sold his stake to the other minority shareholders before the project was complete, giving them slightly more than the originally planned 10 per cent each.
As the years passed and new shareholders were brought in, those proportions shifted. Shakespeare's own stake gradually contracted from one-eighth to roughly one-fourteenth of the theatre, or about 7 per cent, over the course of his career. The Globe was not a grand patron's gift to a favorite playwright; it was a working commercial enterprise, jointly owned by the people performing on its stage. Thomas Brend, who owned the land it stood on, was a neighbor to two Globe shareholders, actors John Heminges and Henry Condell.
The theatre sat within what one period source called an "entertainment ghetto" already established at Southwark, a district where playhouses, bear-baiting arenas, and taverns clustered just far enough from the City of London to escape its regulations.
The Globe's precise dimensions were never recorded in a way that survives, but two centuries of scholarly inquiry point toward a three-storey, open-air amphitheatre roughly 100 feet in diameter, capable of holding up to 3,000 spectators. Wenceslas Hollar sketched it as round, a view he later incorporated into his etched panorama of London from Bankside in 1647. When archaeologists uncovered part of the foundations in 1989, however, the evidence pointed to a polygon with 20 sides.
The cheapest admission cost a penny and bought a standing place in the yard, an open area surrounding the stage on three sides. The groundlings, as those standing audiences were called, stood on a rush-strewn earthen floor; during the 1989 excavation, a layer of nutshells was found pressed into that floor, creating a compressed surface underfoot. Three levels of more expensive stadium-style seats rose vertically around the yard.
The rectangular stage platform extended roughly 43 feet wide and 27 feet deep, raised about 5 feet off the ground. A trapdoor in the stage floor allowed performers to enter from the cellarage beneath, while a second trapdoor in the roof over the stage, the area the company called "the heavens," let performers descend on ropes and harnesses. That ceiling was painted to look like a sky with clouds. Large columns on either side of the rear stage supported the roof, and the stage itself was set in the south-east corner of the building specifically to remain in shade during afternoon summer performances.
On the 29th of June 1613, a theatrical cannon misfired during a performance of Henry VIII, and the wooden beams and thatching caught. One of the few surviving accounts of the fire notes that no one was injured except one man, whose burning breeches were extinguished with a bottle of ale. The building was consumed.
A second Globe was built on the same site and was ready by June 1614. The replacement cost £1,400, double what the original had cost fifteen years earlier, and this time the builders gave it a tile roof rather than thatch. The second Globe stayed open for nearly three more decades, hosting plays until the Long Parliament's ordinance of the 2nd of September 1642 closed every theatre in London at the outbreak of the First English Civil War. The building was pulled down in 1644-45 to make room for tenements.
Early Shakespeare biographer William Oldys claimed that the Globe took its name from the Latin phrase totus mundus agit histrionem, meaning roughly "all the world plays the player," and that this motto appeared on the theatre's flag alongside an image of the globe of the Earth resting on the shoulders of Hercules. Oldys said he had found this in a manuscript from the Harleian collection. His literary executor George Steevens repeated the story in good faith, and the Shakespearean editor Edmond Malone carried it still further.
Scholars now regard Oldys's account as suspicious, with some suggesting he perpetrated a "hoax on his credulous public." An alternative reading traces the name not to Petronius but to Teatrum Mundi, a meditation written in the twelfth century by the philosopher John of Salisbury in his Policraticus. That text, reprinted in 1595, was widely read at the time and drew on theatrical metaphors from both scripture and classical literature. The critic Ernst Curtius argued that it was John of Salisbury's commentary, not Petronius, that actually suggested the name.
Shakespeare's own Hamlet contains a passage that gestures toward this symbolism. His complaint in act 2, scene 3 likens the child actors of the Blackfriars Theatre to figures "carrying off Hercules and his load too," a line that reads as a joke at the Globe's own expense. G. B. Harrison, writing in his 1953 Penguin edition of As You Like It, suggests that Jaques's famous speech beginning "all the world's a stage" in act 2, scene 7 is itself a knowing nod to the theatre's motto.
Shakespeare's Globe, the modern reconstruction, opened in 1997 with a production of Henry V, the same play that may have opened the original theatre in 1599. It stands approximately 230 metres from the site of the original building. The design is described as an academic approximation, built from evidence gathered about both the 1599 structure and its 1614 replacement.
The location of the original foundations was only confirmed in 1989, when the Department of Greater London Archaeology uncovered a small section beneath the car park at the rear of Anchor Terrace on Park Street, including one original pier base. The outline of those foundations is now marked on the surface above. Because the majority of the remaining foundations lie beneath 67-70 Anchor Terrace, a listed building, no further excavation has been permitted since that initial discovery.
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Common questions
When was the Globe Theatre built and by whom?
The Globe Theatre was built in 1599 at Southwark on the south bank of the Thames by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's playing company. Construction used timber salvaged from an earlier theatre called The Theatre, which had been built in Shoreditch in 1576 and dismantled in December 1598. The total cost of building the Globe was £700.
How did the Globe Theatre burn down?
The Globe Theatre burned down on the 29th of June 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, when a theatrical cannon misfired and ignited the wooden beams and thatching. One surviving account notes that no one was killed; the only reported injury was a man whose burning breeches were put out with a bottle of ale.
What share of the Globe Theatre did William Shakespeare own?
Shakespeare initially owned a 12.5 per cent share of the Globe Theatre. Over the course of his career, as new shareholders were added, his stake diminished from one-eighth to roughly one-fourteenth, or about 7 per cent.
How many people could the Globe Theatre hold?
The Globe Theatre is estimated to have been a three-storey, open-air amphitheatre approximately 100 feet in diameter that could house up to 3,000 spectators. Groundlings paid a penny to stand in the yard, while more expensive stadium-style seats occupied three levels rising around them.
When did the Globe Theatre close and why?
The second Globe Theatre closed in 1642 when the Long Parliament issued an ordinance on the 2nd of September of that year closing all London theatres at the outbreak of the First English Civil War. The building was subsequently pulled down in 1644-45 to make room for tenements.
Where is Shakespeare's Globe and when did it open?
Shakespeare's Globe, the modern reconstruction of the original theatre, opened in 1997 approximately 230 metres from the site of the original Globe in Southwark, London. Its opening production was Henry V. The design is an academic approximation based on available evidence about the 1599 and 1614 buildings.
All sources
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