2. Shakespeare’s Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse for
which William Shakespeare wrote his plays, in the London Borough of Southwark, on the
south bank of the River Thames. The original theatre was built in 1599, destroyed by the fire
in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and then demolished in 1644. In any of these settings, men and
boys played all the characters, male and female; acting in Renaissance England was an
exclusively male profession. Audiences had their favorite performers, looked forward to
hearing music with the productions, and relished the luxurious costumes of the leading
characters. The stage itself was relatively bare. For the most part, playwrights used vivid
words instead of scenery to picture the scene onstage. In Shakespeare’s time, a stage
wasn’t just one type of space; plays had to be versatile. The same play might be produced
in an outdoor playhouse, an indoor theater, a royal palace—or, for a company on tour, the
courtyard of an inn.
3. The theatre is located on Bankside, about 230 metres (750 ft) from the original site—measured
from centre to centre. 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. In addition,
listed Georgian townhouses now occupy part of the original site and could not be considered for
removal. 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.
