Globe Theatre

The Globe Theatre stands beside the Thames in Southwark, a short walk from London Bridge. The original wooden playhouse was built in 1599 by Shakespeare’s company on marshy ground near Maiden Lane. A fire in 1613 destroyed it during a performance of Henry VIII, but it rose again the next year with a tiled roof. The site was lost for centuries until archaeologists found part of its foundations beneath a modern car park in 1989. Today a faithful reconstruction, Shakespeare’s Globe, sits a few hundred metres from the original spot. The area was once farmland and open fields, far enough from the crowded riverbank to feel rural. The theatre mattered because it belonged to the actors who performed there. Six shareholders split the ownership, with Richard Burbage and his brother Cuthbert each holding a quarter. Shakespeare held one share, later reduced to a fourteenth as new partners joined. Plays by Shakespeare shared the stage with works by Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker and John Fletcher. The first recorded show in 1599 may have been Julius Caesar, seen by a Swiss visitor that September. A later performance of Henry VIII ended when a stage cannon set the thatch alight, though only one man’s breeches caught fire. Visitors to Shakespeare’s Globe step into a circular open-air space that holds about three thousand people. The stage juts forward into the yard where groundlings once stood for a penny on rush-strewn earth. Three tiers of seats rise around the yard, and the stage itself has trapdoors and a painted ceiling called the heavens. Behind the stage, the tiring house provided dressing rooms and storage for costumes. A musicians’ gallery sits above, used for balcony scenes such as Romeo and Juliet. The modern building follows the best evidence of the 1599 and 1614 designs, giving a sense of how Shakespeare’s plays were first heard.