While
The Bard's home theater was lost to time, his writings
lived on. The words of Williams Shakespeare are so
powerful and so engrained in English culture that
people were compelled to rebuild the theater hundreds
of years after it faded into history. The original
Globe was erected in 1599, and made mostly from reeds,
plaster, and timbers. Those timbers and reeds burned
in 1613, and the Globe was built a second time a year
later. By 1642, the wind had shifted in England. The
Puritans closed all of the city's theaters, and most
knowledge of the Globe was lost. Hundreds of years
later historians would piece together enough information
to try to recreate the venue. In 1970, the Shakespeare
Globe Playhouse Trust was formed to rebuild the theater.
They managed to erect it just a few hundred feet from
its original location. While construction was still
underway, a little bit of the foundations of the original
Globe were unearthed. These helped confirm some design
plans, correct others, and provide inspiration for
the project. Most of the foundation, however, is under
the concrete slab of an apartment building. The theater
is a circular affair, often called a "wooden O." The
circle is made up of 20 segments of oak beams and
lime plaster. Each segment has three tiers of seating
each 11 feet high. The new Globe's dimensions are
close, but not an exact duplication of the building
from Shakespeare's time. The new Globe is nine feet
taller than the original, but the diameter of 100
feet is correct. You can use your high school algebra
and pi to figure out the circumference. The dimensions
are authentic, and interestingly, so is the roofing
material. It is a thatched roof, made of 6,000 bundles
or reeds. This is the first thatched roof in London
since the Great Fire swept through the city in 1666.
Since its completion, the New Globe has become one
of the best known tourist attractions in the city.
It has brought inspiration to a new generation of
writers who now can see what Shakespeare saw, and
feel what he felt looking around the theater. The
reconstruction was a masterful idea, and truly an
asset to London and all the world.
