Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

The Globe Theatre was constructed in 1599, out of timber taken from the Theatre. It stood next to the Rose, on the south side of the Thames, and was the most elaborate and attractive theatre yet built. The Globe was designed and constructed for the Chamberlain's Men by Cuthbert Burbage, son of the Theatre's creator, James Burbage. The lease for the land on which the Globe stood was co-owned by Burbage and his brother Robert, and by a group of five actors -- Will Kempe, Augustine Phillips, John Heminge, Thomas Pope, and William Shakespeare. Much of Shakespeare's wealth came from his holdings in the Globe.

The Globe was the primary home of Shakespeare's acting company beginning in late 1599, and it is a possibility that As You Like It was written especially for the occasion. On June 29, 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a misfired canon ball set the Globe's thatched roof on fire and the whole theatre was consumed. Swift reconstruction did take place and the Globe reopened to the public within a year, with the addition of a tiled roof. The new Globe theatre lasted until 1644, at which time it was demolished, and housing was quickly built where it once stood. Recent attempts have been made to re-create the Globe, and replicas have been built in Tokyo and in London.

The Outside of the Globe
The exterior appearance of the Globe can only be pieced together from sketches of the theatre found in sweeping Elizabethan city scenes, and the interior appearance from the drawing of the Swan Theatre. From these images we can describe the Globe as a hexagonal structure with an inner court about 55 feet across. It was three-stories high and had no roof. The open courtyard and three semicircular galleries could together hold more than 1,500 people.

The Globe Stage
The stage had two primary parts: 1) The outer stage, which was a rectangular platform projecting into the courtyard, from the back wall. Above it was a thatched roof and hangings but no front or side curtains. 2) The inner stage was the recess between two projecting wings at the very back of the outer stage. This stage was used by actors who were in a scene but not directly involved in the immediate action of the play, and it was also used when a scene took place in an inner room.

Underneath the floors of the outer and inner stages was a large cellar called "hell", allowing for the dramatic appearance of ghosts. This cellar was probably as big as the two stages combined above it, and it was accessed by two or more trap-doors on the outer stage and one trap door (nicknamed "the grave trap") on the inner stage. Actors in "hell" would be encompassed by darkness, with the only light coming from tiny holes in the floor or from the tiring-house stairway at the very back of the cellar.

The Tiring-House
Rising from behind the stages was the tiring-house, the three story section of the playhouse that contained the dressing rooms, the prop room, the musician's gallery, and connecting passageways. The tiring-house was enclosed in curtains at all times so the less dramatic elements of play production would be hidden from the audience. Two doors on either side of the tiring-house allowed the actors entrance onto the stage. Sometimes an actor would come through the "middle door", which really referred to the main floor curtains of the tiring-house that led directly onto center stage.

The three levels of the tiring-house were each very different. The first level was, essentially, the inner stage when one was needed. Many times Shakespeare's plays call for a scene within a scene, such as Miranda and Ferdinand playing chess as a backdrop to the main scene in The Tempest (V,i); or a scene in which a character or item needs to be dramatically revealed, as we find in The Merchant of Venice (II,vii), when Portia asks Nerissa to "draw aside the curtains" to show the caskets; or a scene that should take place in a small, confining space, such as the Capulet's Tomb in Romeo and Juliet (V,iii). For scenes such as these, the actors would have pulled back the curtains on the outer stage to expose the tiring-house as the inner stage. Moreover, the plays often call for one character eavesdropping from behind a curtain or door. The tiring-house was used in this case as well, because at its very rear, even further back than the inner stage floor, was an tiny room hidden by a set of drapes. These floor length drapes or dyed cloth hangings were suspended from the ceiling, concealing the actor. The drapes of the first floor tiring-house would have hidden Falstaff in 1 Henry IV (II,vi), when the Sheriff comes to the door of the tavern, and would have cloaked Polonius right before he is killed by Hamlet, in Act III, scene iv, just to name two situations.

The second level of the tiring-house contained a central balcony stage in the middle, undoubtedly used multiple times in the production of Romeo and Juliet, (II,ii) -- the most famous balcony scene in the canon; a small window-stage on each side of the balcony, directly above the side doors on the first floor, used when up to four characters had to be seen from a window; and a curtained inner room behind the balcony stage, that served the same purpose as the inner room on the first floor of the tiring-house.